Next year's World News Media Congress, World Editors Forum and World Advertising Forum events will be held in Durban, South Africa, organiser WAN-Ifra has announced.

The 2017 event, from June 7-9, will be only the second time the Congress has come to the African continent, and follows an event in Cape Town in 2007. WAN-Ifra says location of the Congress is part of a broader plan to expand activities in Africa and connect with colleagues who are leading the media transformation across the continent.

Chief executive Vincent Peyrègne says local partners are outlining "groundbreaking support" for the plan and Durban is the ideal venue: "News publishing companies in South Africa are demonstrating a real thirst for innovation that we will have a taste of during our upcoming Digital Media Africa conference on September 28-30," he says. "This will be a fantastic kick-start in preparation for the Congress next year."

In January of this year, the Women In News (WIN) leadership programme began its sixth year in Africa, bringing together middle and senior managers from newspapers in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The project is supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and forms part of WAN-Ifra's Gender and Media Freedom Strategy.

More than 1000 publishers and senior executives are expected to attend the 69th World News Media Congress, the 24th World Editors Forum and the 27th World Advertising Forum in Durban, which will include sessions on strategy, revenue, and editorial development, research and innovation, as well as issues related to small and mid-sized publishers. Registration is now open at www.wan-ifra.org.