Recently, a delegation from South Africa’s Kaya 95.9 FM visited Nigeria in what CEO Greg Maloka described as “a bid to know our backyard a little better.” Maloka and his team spent the better part of a week in Lagos where among other activities, they were hosted to lunch at the Lagos Motorboat Club, Ikoyi, by the Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation’s ‘Tour Nigeria’ brand.
Kaya FM is the biggest independent radio station in Guateng, South Africa’s most populous province which includes Johannesburg, Pretoria and other cities, and reflects the experiences of the predominantly black, urban listener between the ages 25 to 49 living in the province.
The decades-long apartheid policy previously practiced by European minorities in South Africa meant the country was isolated from the comity of nations including neighboring African countries for years.
So despite over two decades of democratic rule, the process of assimilation for South Africa and its citizens into the international is still ongoing. Currently, many South Africans still say they are “going to Africa” whenever they step out of their borders and travel to neighboring countries.
According to Maloka, “To accept you’re part of a continent, you need to understand the continent not just by geography, but its heart.”
And rather than depend on Western media for news and happenings in Nigeria, the Kaya FM team decided to discover Nigeria by themselves and give first-hand information to their considerably large base of listeners.
With one million weekly views on Youtube, Kaya FM is in a great position to help advance South Africa’s integration with the rest of the continent.
“Our responsibility is to shape people’s opinions and where there is prejudice, to change people’s opinion as well. We are here in Nigeria to see things through our own eyes , I mean African eyes . We do not want to report from the colonial eyes which has been the order of the day and which is not only subjective, but only sees and magnifies the amenable negative occurrences in Nigeria.’’ Maloka revealed.
Already, there’s a healthy business relationship between Nigeria and South Africa, with many South African brands now household names in Nigeria. On the leisure front, however, the trend has been for Nigerian travelers to explore the tourist attractions that the South African economy hugely benefits from. Our organization was endeared to Nigeria by the professional approach adopted by the Director-General, NTDC, Mr. Folarin Coker at selling Nigeria and placing her tourism potentialities on the international market with territorial finesse, African cosmopolitanism as regards identity appreciation and sincerity of purpose through its successful Tour Nigeria brand.