By: Enoch Sithole
Help is at hand for the continent’s climate change journalists thanks to the recently developed Climate Reporting Toolkit Africa.
Developed by the China-Global South Project, the climate journalism toolkit aims to address the challenges faced by African journalists in reporting on climate change, said project coordinator, Njenga Hakeenah.
The toolkit was produced through a “collaborative effort of dozens of individuals and organisations from across the continent,” said Hakeenah. The China-Global South Project, an independent, non-partisan United States-based non-governmental organisation, served as the organising partner. Funding was sourced from several partners.
Hakeenah said the toolkit contains a resource hub, an expert hub, a story hub, and a reporting hub, with plans to add information about various climate change issues. He said that it will assist climate journalists in publishing accurate climate stories from an African perspective.
“I have been a journalist, reporting on climate for over 10 years, and what I realised from my own experiences is that I didn’t have access to resources, be it written resources, people resources, or experts who could guide me when I was producing content on climate change. And so, this kind of challenge showed me that those who are graduating from college are experiencing the same challenge. The idea (of the toolkit) was born out of the need to provide a centralised resource where journalists could find all they need to produce strong climate stories,” he said
He said fake news and myths in the climate change sphere were prevalent, making it difficult for journalists to distinguish between true and false information. “This toolkit was born out of the need that ‘if I need to speak to someone, how do I get to speak to this expert, minus all the bureaucracy?’ Because what happened with us is you would have a story, you have a deadline, but before a government official speaks, you are stranded.”
The toolkit “cuts down this bureaucracy by ensuring that all these resources, the people, resources, the experts, the sample stories, the myth-busting, and every other resource that we have in there, including documents and links to organisations like the UN (United Nations) bodies, with their contacts and the people that you can reach out to (when you need information or comment”. This will help journalists who work under an enormous pressure of time, he added.
The toolkit contains different hubs. These include the resource hub which contains resources from the UN bodies dealing with issues such as water, agriculture and health, related to climate change.
There is also the experts hub. This contains details on experts from several sectors in the climate change arena. These could be from sectors such as health, water, the weather, or forestry.
Another important element in the toolkit is the story hub. This is where there are stories that are produced by climate change journalists. “The reason we have this is that we need samples and examples of stories that journalists can have a look at and say, ‘oh, so if I want to write, I can write a story based on this template’, because we are looking not just at the 5Ws and H but also how to enrich the content in such a way that it can be presentable to the public’,” explained Hakeenah.
The experts that are featured in the toolkit are African because “we are trying to amplify African voices. These experts are people who understand what it means to fetch water from several kilometres away. So, if we get someone from New York, they are used to having piped water, they may not understand what it means to speak about saving water. The African expert knows that very well because they know how far away water can be found.”
Most importantly, the toolkit contains a massive open online course that can be accessed for free. Hakeenah said all the materials that will be published in the toolkit will be freely accessible.
The toolkit initiative will include webinars with African journalists where all sorts of information on climate change will be exchanged. Furthermore, the initiative will commission climate stories from the continent’s reporters to be featured in the toolkit. The journalists will be paid for the stories. “We want climate stories from far-flung villages so that we can ensure that everyone’s story is told.”
Other climate change issues will be added to the toolkit to ensure that climate change journalists access up-to-date and expertly presented information on the phenomenon.
Media houses from across the world will have the liberty to publish the stories on their platforms free of charge.
This article, “Climate reporting toolkit for African Journalists”, was originally published by the Ajen newsletter on October 8 2024.