By Ojugbele Omotunde
Recently, journalists across African countries converged in Accra Ghana to deepen their understanding of climate justice and fortify their storytelling skills.
The two days workshop hosted by the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), in collaboration with the African Activists for Climate Justice (AACJ) consortium, had 17 journalists from 13 African countries in participation.
The journalists from the various African nations, including Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, Kenya, Somalia, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Mali, Senegal, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, discussed climate challenges and recommended solutions.
The journalists also discussed climate change impacts on communities, including heatwaves, floods, droughts, and desertification.
During the gathering, Journalists from Nigeria expressed their challenges in accessing accurate climate data and challenging biases in climate reporting while arguing that without accurate information, their reporting lacks credibility.
Also, Zongo from Burkina Faso emphasized the need to dismantle stereotypes perpetuating gender inequality in climate narratives, ensuring inclusive and representative reporting of local realities.
The journalists, according to a report from aacj.africa, advocated for increased media coverage of climate change stories, allocation of more resources for reporting, and improving access to reliable data on climate impacts and also emphasized the importance of improved data availability for informed reporting and decision-making.
They further emphasized community engagement and advocated ffor policy change and government action on climate change.
At the end of the training, the journalists recommended empowering vulnerable groups like women, indigenous communities, and marginalized populations to share their experiences and perspectives on climate change and also called for inclusive training programs and capacity-building initiatives to ensure their voices are heard.
They added that the problem of misinformation about climate change is urgent and stressed the importance of fact-checking, cooperation between the media, civil society, and government organizations, as well as the encouragement of advocacy campaigns and investigative reporting as a means of holding governments responsible and influencing policy.
In addition to stressing the necessity of continual assistance and resources to improve journalists’ abilities in reporting on climate-related concerns, they stressed the significance of increasing media capacity through ongoing training and capacity-building programs.
The journalists went on to say that they are dedicated to putting plans into action, encouraging inter-country cooperation, and creating anticipation for international climate conferences.