Media outlets serving eco-responsible citizenship in West Africa
In West Africa, news reports on climate disruption are rare and are often restricted to recounting natural catastrophes. Media outlets do however have a key role to play in explaining the causes of disruption, provide information about possible adaptation solutions and develop a positive stance. Since 2022, Terra Africa has built journalist capacity regarding the coverage of climate disruption and environmental issues in five countries.
Starting with training on the concepts of climate disruption and solutions-oriented journalism, the 40 journalists from 21 media outlets selected for the project, benefitted from training in 2024 on fact-checking, a key discipline to help push back against climate scepticism.
Parallel to this, scientists and environmentalist NGO workers were taken on four press trips to sites where the effects of climate disruption are visible and measurable. Thanks to this support, the journalists were able to produce subjects based on a reliable diagnosis, illustrating the impact on human activity and biodiversity.
198 articles and reports produced
In the course of the project, the journalists produced 198 subjects. They easily surpassed their goals in terms of quantity and the output was top quality too, with two beneficiaries winning awards: an Ivorian journalist won second prize in the Norbert Zongo African Investigative Journalism Awards (PAJI-Norbert Zongo) for her investigation “Bianouan, les malades invisibles du mercure” (“Bianouan, mercury’s invisible victims”), while another journalist from Cabo Verde won the national journalism award with an article on recycling and the environment.
The project wound up with national seminars in each of the five partner countries, attended by a total of 450 journalists, scientists, and members of civil society organisations and public authorities. The best productions were awarded the Terra Africa prize, at ceremonies widely covered by each country’s media.
“In Africa, journalists have always focussed on themes with plenty of audience appeal, with actual news taking a back seat. Terra Africa has turned journalists into experts reporting on environmental issues, especially climate disruption. This project offers French- and Portuguese-speaking Africa an opportunity to improve coverage of these questions, reporting accurately and effectively on local instances of global issues.” Papa Abdoullaye Fall, Senegalese trainer
