Kenya on Wednesday called on the international media to report about positive happenings in Africa instead on concentrating only on the negative ones.

Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said Africa which he termed as "the continent of the future" has a lot of positive attributes worthy reporting on, yet the international media always highlighted the negatives, depicted Africa as "a continent of calamities and unceasing tragedies."

"Few international newsmakers bother to take a second look at the various outstanding endowments the continent boasts of," Musyoka said during the launch of China Central Television (CCTV) Africa News production Center in Nairobi.

"There are natural attributes found only in Africa that can support an upsurge of tourism in the continent, heroes and heroines who have overcome adversity to join the world's best and most illustrious and the advances at the continent have made towards modernizing her means of production across sectors," he said.

Musyoka urged the station to liaise closely with local media houses in order to increase its reach and strengthen Sino-African cultural understanding. "This in my view will enhance deeper cultural ties that will in turn be instrumental in cementing the relationship and understanding between the people of China and Africa," the Vice President noted. He stressed the important role technology and particularly television plays in promoting world peace and tolerance among diverse communities through bridging the wide geographical divides. "Unless modern states make deliberate efforts to use technology to link our diverse world and emphasize that human destiny is essentially one and inevitably intertwined, we shall forever dwell in firefighting to reconcile people instead of spending our energies in pulling our people out of poverty and ignorance," he added.

The vice president challenged CCTV to use the station in promoting development models that have worked for the more developed economies in the African continent. Musyoka commended the station for recruiting 90 percent of its editorial staff locally.

CCTV Vice President Sun Yusheng said that the opening of the new hub in Nairobi is in line with CCTV's desire to be a leading international media with global and balanced viewpoints. Kenya's Information and Communications Minister Samuel Poghisio noted the launch was apt as it occurred when the country had promulgated a new constitution that provides for abundant freedoms including that on the press. He said the government has provided the necessary environment for media investment through capacity building, development of infrastructure, ICT connectivity and upgrade and provision of regional networks among other measures.

The minister noted that the launch of the media hub in Nairobi will not only create employment opportunities for Kenyans, but also afford them the latest technologies in media broadcast field.