Jossart Muanza leads, from Switzerland, afriquechos.ch, a news site aiming at bridging expatriates across the entire world.He lives one foot in Europe, another one in Africa. His exile had lasted fifteen years before Jossart Muanza, in 2000, could at last see again his motherland, Angola. Yet this country, which has been torn apart by the civil war for two decades and a half, is still to suffer for a couple of years the same fractricide conflict that just had driven him to finding refuge in Switzerland in 1985.
“Being expatriate, one does not always realize that the country there is evolving. One keeps a static image that no longer corresponds to the reality”, says the one who has never ceased since to go to and fro between Ecublens and Luanda, and more importantly, to favor exchanges between cultures.
Softening the exile of his compatriots has always motivated his commitments. Soon after he had arrived in Switzerland, the former technician and journalist of the Angolan national radio succeeded to animate an associational programme on Radio Acidule, so as to lay bridges, by then already, just what he has been doing since 2000 with Afriqu’Echos. His intercultural magazine, first published in three years on a frozen paper, has become today a reference not only for the Diaspora worldwide but also for those remaining in Africa.
From the Congo to Togo, from Senegal to Nigeria, from the USA to Canada, or from France to Belgium, an estimated 4000 to 22000 internet users—related to sportive, political, or cultural news—everyday consult the news headings published by afriquechos.ch. “There is a lack: a very few newspapers here do report diverse aspects of our continent.
The site does also allow to grasp Europe’s current news with our African lenses”, explains Jossart Muanza who is shouldered by a fifteen-strong team of correspondents, media professionals and volunteers. Informing, plus reporting the exiles’ daily living, is part of Afriqu’Echos’ vision. “Our duty is to sensitize our compatriots to issues relating to migration or integration”, explains the editor-in-chief, proud to find out that he is quoted by fellow newsmen working in the biggest dailies of Africa, and to have the assurance of not living in an ivory tower.
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