The Arab Newspaper Development Programme (ANDP) is a ground-breaking project in which newspapers throughout the Middle East and North Africa region learn from each other's experiences and exchange information on commercial and editorial strategies. As part of the programme, the participating newspapers receive exclusive training from WAN-IFRA and our project partners. The overall aim of the ANDP is to strengthen the viability of the independent press in the region. Experiences generated through the project are shared with others through this website.

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Three of the most respected independent Arab newspapers are the core partners of the Arab Newspaper Development Programme. An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon, El Watan in Algeria, and Egyptian publisher Hisham Kassem have all embarked on projects to find innovative ways to renew their media outlets and the Arab media scene in general.

ANDP is funded by the Cairo-based Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI).

Visit the blog for archived material from the ANDP.

Middle East Publishing Conference Examines Region’s Transformation

WAN-IFRA presented its 7th annual Middle East conference with a look at media transformation in the region and issued a call for proposals for innovative projects to support the independent press.

Arab Newspaper Development Programme - Call for proposals 2012

Throughout 2012, the Arab Newspaper Development Programme will provide workshops, training and consulting for 10 selected media outlets in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. The goal is to identify new strategic development opportunities, revenue steams and build sustainable independent media businesses.

Young Men: Arab-Danish Photojournalism Experiment

Young Men Photo ExhibitionIn Copenhagen, Beirut, Cairo and Algiers, three Danish and three Arab photojournalists were given the task to research, find and portray a personal history about young men born in the 1980s. The mission was to document the everyday life, the faces and the dreams of a unique group of people sharing the same age, the same sex and the same planet, yet living on opposite sides of a great divide.

Visit the online exhibition catalogue.

Essays from the photographers

The participants from the DEDI/WAN-IFRA photojournalism project wrote about what motivates them as photographers in a selection of candid essays produced exclusively for WAN-IFRA's ANDP website. 

Time for online Arab newspapers to diversify with WebTV

As more and more people turn to the Internet as their main source of multimedia news and entertainment, the role of video has become vital. Online news outlets such as the BBC and Al Masry Al Youm have dedicated a lot more room on their websites for video news, a clue that points to WebTV news gaining ground in the not so distant future.

Even newsrooms can undergo a makeover

Hisham Kassem is a successful entrepreneur in the world of Egyptian news media. Amongst many other things, he was one of the founders of Al Masry Al Youm in 2003. Under Kassem’s leadership, the daily newspaper changed the face of Egyptian news reporting during the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections. It has since become the most read independent newspaper in Egypt.