To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cepacs (the Pan-African Committee for Social Communications), Catholic Bishops and media professionals from all parts of the continent met in Lagos, Nigeria for a 3-day conference. The purposes of the encounter was to redefine the body’s goals, examine the Church’s presence in the digital and multimedia world, and question the present and future of the media in Africa.
Closing the intense days of presentations, discussions, suggestions and recommendations from the various bishops and communications professionals, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, Archbishop of Kinshasa and president of Secam (the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar) said that it is impossible to imagine evangelization in Africa today without simultaneously thinking about communications.
A persistent call from the Cepacs Conference in Lagos was for the Church in Africa to engage more with the digital culture because it has come to stay and cannot be ignored. The Church in Africa, as elsewhere, must confront a media landscape that resembles a Babel without gatekeepers: a context in which young and sometimes inexperienced people are conditioned by influencers and content creators, who reign supreme.