Durban — This week a group of African media practitioners - young reporters, veteran correspondents and journalists-in-training - got together in the shadow of the COP17 climate talks to exchange experiences and ideas for covering the pressing issue of climate change across Africa.
Participants included five young journalists from Cameroon, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria who recently participated in the African Youth Caravan for Climate Change, traveling overland in a 17-day bus convoy from Nairobi to Durban.The event was co-sponsored by the Media Capacity Development section of the UNDP Africa Adaptation Programme, represented by its media specialist, Gifti Nadi, and AllAfrica, in a discussion moderated by AllAfrica's Melissa Britz. Some excerpts of the exchange:
Veteran African Journalists
Chokri Ben Nessir, editor in chief, La Presse de Tunisie
"We have had a revolution in our country, we have elections, so climate change doesn't seem so important, so that is a challenge for journalists to overcome. For the young journalists, I have this advice: the experience you have had in travelling through Africa, everything you saw, smelled, touched and discovered – all this should be in your reports. The reader of your articles should be able to smell the things you smelled, to see the things you saw. This is the secret of how to bring this experience into your reports. I think the most important thing about climate change for journalists is to awaken your five senses. If you are beside a tree, you will see this tree differently – maybe with respect. You have to think that this tree has a history, and maybe it will not have a future. It is things like this that should be treated in explaining climate change. We can help sensitize people, and by making things simple and accessible to readers, we can help all these adaptation projects be more understandable to all the people in Africa."
Erick Kabendira, Tanzanian freelance journalist covering East Africa
"Let's take my country, Tanzania, for example – 80% of our population is involved in agriculture, and for the last two years farmers are facing so many challenges, including unpredictable rains and droughts. All these challenges need to be addressed. From the point of view of this conference, the main document doesn't mention anything about agriculture – that's what Africans at this conference have been trying to push for. So how relevant is COP17 to Africa? That's the question I been asking myself since I got here. I've visited farmers across the continent, I've slept in their homes and eaten their food, and I know that they would like to see meetings like this delivering to commitments so we can address the challenges they are facing."
Francis Tuffour, senior reporter, Ghanaian Times
"Basically there is this perception that climate change is making Africa suffer the most, and it is said that poverty is the reason. So there should be funding created so that we in Africa would benefit from it, so we can use it to put measures in place so that governments would help mitigate the challenges. Africa is calling for the sector ministers especially to be able to help us to use this fund to build capacities for our people, to educate them, and put measures in place so in the event of a crisis, we can help avert challenges that may happen."
Emerging African journalists, who travelled on the Climate Justice African Youth Caravan from Nairobi to COP17, Durban
Simegnish Yekoye Mengesha, Ethiopian Environmental Journalists Association, Citizen newspaper
"This whole caravan experience has taught me how to adapt to different cultures and countries, and professionally, I've learned a very important lesson: as we went down we have seen the impacts of climate change in person. We've seen forests destroyed, we met farmers not able to grow crops any more because of rain not coming. Before, I told myself I am an environmental journalist – I quote scientists, talk to politicians, write my story – but only once I went down to grassroots level and saw the life of the people did I really understand climate change."
Audrey Wabwire, Kenyan freelance radio and print journalist
"How do you tell youth about climate change? It's extremely boring, it's jargon – so we decided to use an award-winning musician from Kenya who travelled with us. He would sing and entertain the crowd, then after he would ask the youth, Do you care about climate change? Do you care about your forests? So as we travelled I noticed how music can be used to engage communities. And all throughout this experience, I listened to the plight of women. There'd be very few women at each concert. And the ones who came were afraid to talk, they would not know what climate change was, yet they'd be going to the clinic, carrying their children, looking for food. I realized it's very important for the government to start thinking about women in terms of adaptation to climate change. So I've been talking with women leaders at COP 17, and when I go back home I'm going to talk to leaders in my country and follow up on this."
Youssouphe Bodian, Senegalese freelance journalist
"It's been a wonderful experience. I come from West Africa and it was quite interesting to see the landscape in the east of Africa. I live in a place that's totally different – the mountains of east and west Africa are very different, in terms of landscape. And on our trip on the caravan we were actually living the effects of climate change. It's going to help us to report better when we get back to our home countries."
Bernice Atabong, Cameroun Radio and Television
"Climate change is now very real to me. I have seen that it has a serious impact on agriculture in Africa. In Malawi, they are trying to shift away from eating maize because maize planting not does do well these days. The same is happening in Cameroun – we used to eat yams, we now eat cassava. We had to change the kinds of things we eat. Even the Maasai people were telling us that the cattle don't have enough grass to eat so their main activity of cattle rearing can't carry on and some of the youth have left the rural areas to come to town to sell stuff to tourists – that's the story we heard. We collected about 200,000 signatures for petitions on climate change while we travelled thru the 6 countries, and also, while travelling we had the opportunity of realizing just how beautiful the African continent is. We were telling ourselves, if nothing is done to fight climate change, in future these places will be gone and people will be telling their grandchildren, Africa used to be a beautiful continent."
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Augustina Armstrong-Obonna, reporter, Radio Nigeria
"In my country, the Ogoni people's land has changed – they can't farm, they can't fish. On our trip through Africa on the caravan we got to see the effects of climate change with our own eyes. Before, we thought this is a small issue, but now we see it's big – it affects business, health, agriculture, so many aspects of people's lives. As young journalists, we now feel that from our experience, we will do more. This has been an experience of a lifetime, we'll never forget it."
