Dialogue Earth and the Wits Africa-China Reporting Project at the Wits Centre for Journalism, held a workshop on Reporting Climate Change in Africa, on 1 November 2024, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Workshop convened with selected and invited journalists, media scholars and professionals, to develop their skills and knowledge on climate change reporting within the context of Africa.
The Workshop included engagements between trainers and expert representatives, and participants from a range of countries including South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and China, furthermore, the Workshop was attended by online participants joining from countries including Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho, Zambia, Cameroon and Uganda, in the aims of producing impactful journalism.
The Reporting Climate Change in Africa Workshop, follows the launch of the free Reporting Climate Change in Africa Online Course, developed under the ground-breaking collaboration between the four global organisations; Dialogue Earth, Wits Africa-China Reporting Project, Development Reimagined, and The China Global South Project, under the funding framework of the Africa Climate Foundation (ACF). The full presentation to the collaboration was presented by Brian Wangoma, Impact Editor, Dialogue Earth, and is accessible here. Furthermore, within the collaboration, ten reporting grants awards were provided, as announced on Dialogue Earth's Facebook and Twitter X platforms.
The Reporting Climate Change in Africa project aims to help build the field of climate journalism in Africa. This supports the wider development of journalism and environmental civil society on the continent, and helps to create opportunities for media professionals, organisations and NGOs that demand a greater voice in the public sphere.
African voices have been excluded from the global conversations around climate change and the just transitions, and there is scant awareness of climate change solutions appropriate to African realities. The continent's choices of partners and technologies remain contingent on external drivers; stakeholders lack the tools for making proactive choices around partnerships for the climate and environment initiatives.
Informed media coverage is required to improve public participation, and to support greater awareness of the risks and opportunities among development partnerships and initiatives related to climate change mechanisms, and their impact on the grass roots, technological and financing options, African resources and manufacturing in the renewable energy industry. African media can play a greater role in showcasing African perspectives and needs, in scrutinizing governments' and business roles in partnership with global players and investors.
The Reporting Climate Change in Africa Workshop featured expert-led discussions, interactive sessions and skills training on climate change coverage, media and education in Africa. The Workshop engaged the modules presented in the Reporting Climate Change in Africa Online Course, the Climate Reporting Toolkit Africa and Reporting Guides, as well insights of their applicability to reporting African perspectives and contexts, with an emphasis on voices of women, youth, and other under-represented groups.
Trainer: Duncan Mboyah, Independent journalist, Nairobi Kenya
The first session presented and engaged on a range of elements to understanding climate change in Africa. These included and were not limited to understanding the implications of the climate crisis for an African audience; Why is climate change a difficult subject matter for beginners? How climate change stories can be told to the African audience in a language that is concise and compelling? What role(s) African media can play in responding to the climate challenge? And what needs to happen or change to address the inadequacies in Africa media response to climate change.
The full presentation of Duncan Mboyah is available here.
Trainer: Sydney Kawadza, Editor, Zimbabwe Independent, Harare, Zimbabwe
The second session engaged on African sources and voices in climate reporting. The engagement included discussions of the various sources of climate change information; Identifying the experts, researchers, indigenous communities, farmers etc.; How journalists in Africa can access and use these sources to inform their reporting; Why it is important for African journalists to include the views and voices of African climate experts and local people affected by the crisis in their stories; And presenting some of the resources for reporting climate change-sources, contacts, and guide books.
The full presentation of Sydney Kawadza is available here.
Trainer: Zubaida Ismail, Investigative Journalist, Accra, Ghana
The third session engaged on the practical and effective ways of telling the climate change story to the African audience; How climate change affects development and how reporters can identify and report such stories; How to link climate change with the issues affecting the African continent, namely; Health, Food security, Biodiversity, Waste Management, Water, Conflict, Security, Insecurity, Immigration, Energy, and Political instability.
The full presentation of Zubaida Ismail is available here.
Trainer: Dr Enoch Sithole, Executive Director, Institute for Climate Change Communication, Johannesburg, South Africa
The fourth session engaged on the historical-current understandings to climate change in Africa; How the current status of climate change education in the African curriculum was; And how climate change curriculum is in African universities. Furthermore, the session identified and discussed the gaps and opportunities to climate education in Africa; Case studies and empirical examples of climate education in Africa, and the challenges and solutions to climate education in Africa.
The full presentation of Dr Enoch Sithole is available here.
Facilitator: Njenga Hakeenah Ndekere, Africa Climate Editor, China-Global South Project, Nairobi, Kenya
The fifth session presented the Climate Reporting Toolkit Africa and Reporting Guides, exploring the various resources the toolkit and reporting guides provides to journalists in Africa; Understanding the Reporting and Story Hub, the Knowledge Hub, the Networking Hub, Myths and Myth busting resources. Engaging the various Reporting Guides; Learning through the Leveraging African Indigenous Knowledge to Combat Climate Change; A Practical Guide for African Journalists – The Cobalt Supply Chain in the DRC; Africa’s Energy Future; How the Climate Crisis Affects African Food security; Why Africa Could be a Global Clean Energy Powerhouse; Finding Africa’s Voice in the Climate Change Conversation; The Effect of Climate Change on Africa’s Water Systems.
The full presentation of Njenga Hakeenah Ndekere is available here.
Facilitator: Bongiwe Tutu, Project Coordinator, Wits Centre for Journalism
The final session presented tools and resources on writing a reporting grant proposal, engaging on the key elements to writing a reporting grant proposal; What is important to include in a reporting grant proposal?; How reporting proposals can present background, methodologies, relevance and rationale, and target audiences?; What needs to go into a reporting grant proposal budget?; And on the fundamentals to a strong proposal; Reporting on data, and resources to databases.
The full presentation of Bongiwe Tutu is available here.