Zambia’s growing community media sector, which boasts 60 radio stations and 6 print entities, is regarded as an important tool for community and grassroots development. These media outlets are responsive to their audiences and have established themselves as frontline sources of information and platforms of communication for the communities in their coverage areas.
However, community media journalists are increasingly subject to incidents of intimidation and harassment and there have also been arrests and domestic censorship of some online newspapers. Most of these journalists...
Regions: Africa
The aim of this project is to allow the female citizens of Ouakam to acquire critical capacity in matters relating to the media, with the aim of strengthening their civic engagement, notably by strengthening their capacity to produce citizen information. At the end of the course, the young women of Ouakam will have acquired expertise and strong skills in issues relating to media literacy and information. They will be able to better evaluate the role of the EMI in strengthening participatory democracy and socio-economic development. This project aims to allow the female citizens of Ouakam...
One of the major resolutions of Zimbabwe’s 2012 Media Stakeholders Conference was the need for the media to play a central role in promoting awareness about, and responses to, climate change. A lack of journalists trained to understand climate and environmental issues has resulted in minimal reporting on climate change and a lack of sufficient information to promote public efforts of mitigation and adaptation.
This project will address the need to educate Zimbabwean journalists on climate change by training a group to report on weather, agro-economics and tourism news as well...
The aim of the project is to strengthen the professional capacity of the community-radio journalists and broadcast presenters involved in collecting, processing and disseminating radio information; it seeks to strengthen the institutional framework of community radio stations by providing a solid basis for their independence, and thereby contributing towards the promotion of freedom of expression, the pluralism of ideas, and the diversity and quality of information provided to local communities.
Following the May 2013 meeting in Rabat, which was co-hosted by the Haute Autorité de la Communication Audiovisuelle du Maroc (HACA) and UNESCO, where it was agreed that Orbicom and UNESCO should pilot a Global Initiative for Excellence in Journalism Education, Orbicom now seeks UNESCO’s financial support to include a strong contingent of African journalism educators in its forthcoming meeting in Turkey to be co-hosted by the Department of Journalism of the University of Istanbul. Given the Global Initiative’s emphasis on North-South and South-South collegial ‘shared excellence’ in...
Since gaining independence in the 1990s, Tanzania’s media sector has grown rapidly and it is now one of the most developed in the region. However, women are largely absent as media owners. Private media houses, which comprise the bulk of media houses in Tanzania, are owned almost exclusively by men. The proposed project therefore seeks to help Tanzania reach its commitment to gender equality in and through media. The UNESCO Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media would be used to assess the level of gender mainstreaming in 14 community radios in Tanzania. The findings would then be used to...
Journalists in Malawi face considerable risks to their safety as they conduct their professional duties. Restrictive media laws are in place and some journalists are not aware of the full implication of these laws, which exposes them to even greater danger. For example, during the protests on 20 July 2011 about issues of human rights and poor governance, police ordered a crackdown on journalists attempting to cover the event and reportedly beat, arrested and harassed some of them. The state broadcasting regulator also directed three independent radio stations to stop coverage of the...
The Ethiopian media is a very recent phenomenon, mainly consisting of state-controlled radio and television. Addis Ababa City Administration Community Media (FM 96.3) is one of the few community radio stations in the country. It serves 1.5 million people across a 105 km radius, providing 18 hours of daily transmission in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. However, its journalists lack professional skills.
The proposed project aims to address this gap by training volunteer journalists, reporters, editors and technicians at FM 96.3 to be able to produce high quality...
While Mozambique as a whole has a fairly developed media sector, the Manda Wilderness area faces limitations to media coverage. Journalism as a profession does not exist in the area. There are no daily newspapers; no Mozambican Internet or mobile network coverage (only expensive Malawi services); and no media tools to share relevant information (e.g. on health, education and agriculture). As a result, the Manda Wilderness communities have no voice on issues of concern to them.
Training community individuals to cover issues and spread freedom of speech would therefore be a...
Fesmedia Africa's 2010 media barometer reveals that the journalism training at the University of Antananarivo does not include refresher programmes even though graduating students experience difficulties due to pedagogical shortcomings and gaps in the content of the initial training programmes. Furthermore, among the media professionals, the vast majority (more than 700) are trained on the job. One consequence of this is the plethora of articles based on sensationalism and a dull report of facts. This project aims to strengthen the capacity of a national pool of instructors from 6 public...
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