Perugia Journalism Festival Hosts Launch of Report on Enhancing African Journalism Schools

The primary focus of the event was the launch of a comprehensive report detailing the outcomes of a project enhancing African journalism education. The session also featured live testimonies from two journalism teachers whose institutions won grants through a competitive process, emphasizing criteria for excellence in African journalism education.

"We self-assessed that over ten years and saw that we had barely included environmental journalism training for our students," said Nazarene Makena of Kenya's Tangaza University College. "When we looked into changing this, we learnt that this beat can be second to war journalism in terms of danger, and that it needed appropriate training".

Recognizing the importance of this field, Makena's department held workshops with its teaching team and developed a specialized curriculum, drawing on UNESCO's resources on reporting climate change.

On a field trip to a large rubbish tip in Nairobi, "students saw at firsthand the problems of waste disposal, and the politics within a systemic chain of environmental harms," stated Ms Makena.

They also learnt about the complexities of people making a living in the short-term through recycling activities, even while their children had respiratory problems from the emissions on the site.

From Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia, instructor Fitih Alemu Feleke shed light on their project's focus on gender-based violence in conflict zones. She highlighted the under-representation of women in newsrooms and narratives, stressing the ned for gender-sensitive reporting. She explained that: "Women are covered as victims in order to demonise enemies and are not reflected as agents for reconstruction and hope." Her school's self-assessment showed that they were not being responsive enough to these challenges.

Drawing on the diversity amongst their students, and a memorandum with a media institution, the students were empowered with the skills of gender-sensitive conflict coverage and brought into debates with media managers about alternative and hope-filled approaches to story-telling.

"Since we did not have enough practical training in our programme, we created a website for students to use with a gender-sensitive mindset." Ms Feleke said this gave them visibility for their future employment and linked them with the media through joint projects.

A significant outcome of the project is the development of criteria for excellence in African journalism education. This builds upon the original work created in 2007, which garnered considerable attention. These newly established criteria outline expectations for journalism schools' programmes to:

• promote human rights and journalism ethics.
• include practical training in basic and advanced skills.
• foster innovation.
• attend to shifting realities (including environmental)
• position the role of journalism in the wider information landscape.

The UNESCO initiative, supported by the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) and the Google News Initiative, was implemented in collaboration with journalism schools at Wits University and Rhodes University, engaging over 100 journalism educators across Africa.

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