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One of Africa's most important schemes for the development of photojournalism has received a major boost following the donation of camera equipment by Canon.

It is providing 20 EOS 400D kits to students taking the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (PDP) programme run by Market Photo Workshop in South Africa and supported by Getty Images.

The Johannesburg-based course aims to develop news photography among young, southern African students, many of whom have only limited access to equipment.

The PDP programme, thought to be the first professional-level, accredited photojournalism programme in Africa, grew out of a partnership between Getty Images and Market Photo.
Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein, himself a South African, developed the ties to enable one student to spend a year in New York studying at the International Centre of Photography. This ran for two years until 2005 when it was decided that setting up a course in South Africa itself would benefit a larger number of students.

© Shabba Kgotlaetsho

The informal cross-border trade at the Botswana-Zimbabwe border extends to the currency business.

Peggy Willett, director of community and industry support at Getty Images, says that Klein, along with chairman Mark Getty, wanted to support and promote photojournalism as the country entered a new political era.
"The donation of cameras by Canon this year takes the program to a new level. For the first time, the students will have a professional kit. And those who graduate will be able to keep the equipment as they move into their profession," she added.

Market Photo Workshop was set up in the turbulent days towards the end of the Apartheid era by renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt. Now in the middle of its second year-long PDP programme, Market Photo is extending its reach by recruiting from the whole of southern Africa for its 2008 course. In addition, it is forging links with media organisations in those countries so that students have a greater incentive to return home and be part of the drive to improve standards of photojournalism across the region.

John Fleetwood, Market Photo's director, told CPN that photojournalism is a cornerstone of a free press and vital for a region moving into a new period of its history.
"In many places around the world photojournalists are seen as secondary to writers, and that situation is even more acute in South Africa," he says. "Here, there is a long history of struggling towards democracy that has established a strong tradition of documentary photography."
The development of more African photojournalists is important to the region, he says, as it is these photographers who most understand African culture, and are therefore in the best position to comment on it.
"It's about training the eye in a photographic context and being able to interpret the news where it has a contextual, social-cultural and political understanding. Also, South Africans who use the media are not always visually literate, so we have to keep this in mind when creating this media," says Fleetwood.

Market Photo's strong links with local media allows students to gain experience through internships. Indeed, these companies were also involved in the drawing up of the curriculum of the PDP programme in the first place. This close working relationship has already paid off. Some of the students on the first PDP course had formal job offers while still on the course.

The programme is made up of a practical, technical element and a project element. Market Photo puts students in touch with media or NGOs to help develop such projects. The International Organisation for Migration project in 2006 was one such initiative.
"Last year we took about seven students and they went out with photographers from the region and on their own," says Fleetwood. "They travelled with informal cross-border traders so that they got an understanding of these people's lives."

© Lerato Maduna

Studies have shown that women have come to dominate the informal cross-border trading. For some it's their only source of income.

Lerato Maduna, a former student from Soweto, says the PDP course gave her the skills to develop and define a consistent style. "It also gave me the confidence to work as a photographer on my own, without a reporter," she says. "It gave me the confidence to say that I'm a photographer."

John Fleetwood says that Canon's donation of the EOS 400D bodies, along with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lenses, will make a real difference to the students.

"A camera in a South African context is a very expensive piece of equipment and many of our students are from disadvantaged communities," he says.
"The pool of cameras that the students have had access to has been quite small. Now we will be able to bring forward a whole group of students who can spend more time with the camera and therefore get a better feel for it."

The final call for non-South African students wanting to apply for the 2008 course comes in October of this year, a little earlier than for South African applicants.