The Nihal European University in Sudan

The Institute for Journalism, Media Practice and Communication is the university’s research, teaching and service site in the field of media and communications. As such it will be affiliated with the Technical Faculty and specially linked to the Department of Media Studies and Communication Design as well as to the Central Office for University Infrastructure. The Institute should be work to make linkages as extensively as possible between science, media and business in Sudan, Africa, the Arab world, Europe and other countries. In particular European journalists, media scholars and students should be placed in contact with Sudanese, African and Arab media, agencies and other public relations entities and vice-versa, so that representatives of the various cultures can become familiar with the media of other cultures.

Research in the Institute should be focused on media studies with a particular eye toward cultural comparison and the analysis of media policy with respect to the encounter of various cultures in a globalized world.

This research should train students of the Nihal European University in Sudan especially in dealing with the media in the modern globalized world of work and communications with its specific forms of information distribution (i.e. new communications technologies, multimedia presentations, Internet sites and electronic publications). At a later stage the teaching of these skills can be offered in the form of courses to private individuals, institutions and firms. In addition the Institute can offer its own media services in exchange for payment.

One of the tasks of the Institute, as soon as the means are available, will be setting up and operating both campus radio and campus television stations. Both media should serve communication and information at the university-internal level as well. In the mid to long term it should be possible to produce audiovisual teaching materials for the individual degree programmes. In addition both media services should plan long-term to become a broadcasting operations for the university, playing a role in the cultural media offered in Greater Khartoum by providing broadcasts on academic and artistic topics. Films for teaching and public information could be produced and broadcasted. Informative and educational films could be produced and broadcasted for general public education. Technical and political opportunities, including the legal option of using privately owned broadcasters, will have to be reviewed by the Institute for Journalism, Media Practice and Communication.

In mid- to long-range planning it should be possible to establish a university printing press with an affiliated university publishing house. One of the major problems in publishing in Sudan is that there is no sufficient infrastructure and thus a great number of works never even go to press. Here a university publishing house and printing press should provide assistance for the Nihal European University in Sudan and its members, in order to make it possible at a later stage of development to attract extramural publications. In addition to producing books the university publishing house should also focus on the production of alternative modern media, such as multimedia presentations including the corresponding teaching materials.

The university’s Executive Board possesses in all these media the right to review and supervise the legal and informational grounding of their publications. Sudanese media and publishing law should be observed, as well as the maintenance of high standards.