CHOGM: PACJA capacity builds African media in Kigali

Kigali, Rwanda: The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance today held a media training sessions meant to capacity build African journalists on how best to report on the climate change in the context of the forthcoming 27^th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change set for Egypt in November.

The training took place in the sidelines of the ongoing Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) taking place in Kigali, Rwanda.

“The training intends to expose journalists to opportunities and gain a wider understanding of key issues shaping the COP27 debates, key players and processes ahead of COP27 and their role in shaping these debates,” said Charles Mwangi, Acting Executive Director PACJA.

Mwangi said Africa, led by the PACJA has already charted a road map towards COP27 through a strategy whose work started in December in Cairo during the post-COP26 meeting of the CSOs.

He added that the Kigali training will offer journalists the opportunity to plug into the process, key moments to gather information and influence processes ahead of COP27.

Philip Kilonzo, Communication Lead PACJA said this year’s training theme aimed to drive and shape the African narratives that ultimately influence the discussions to take place during the 27th conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change as well as the outcome texts from the COP27 Presidency.

In his remark, Maxwell Gomera UNDP Representative Rwanda decried that Africans do not tell their stories very well and that is why green investors shy away from lending money owing to so many stories of corruption and incompetency.

“How can Africa transition to clean energy yet we are being denied basic technologies by the developed countries. We need to develop human capital in order to transition. We need to develop a lot in education, science and research,” he added.

Eugene Nforngwa, Energy Thematic Lead PACJA laid emphasis on climate justice. He said “A climate justice narrative led by the African media players is needed as the continent prepares to host the COP27.

“As such it will be fundamentally useful to have deeper conversations on what are the African narratives of importance and how best to anchor these narratives in a consistent and coherent manner across all spaces, including in media publications, enhancing political orientation of the continent and in the actual negotiations in COP,” he concluded.

Several capacity-building presentations were made by different resource persons, Robert Muthami (Senior Programme Advisor, FES – Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung), Isaiah Esipisu (PAMACC), Prof Kioko Ireri, Duncan Mboya (Xinhua News Agency), Kofi Adu Domfeh, and Zainabu Wandati all highlighted the multiple facets of what the African demands were and how they were to be treated at the COPs.

Some of the demands include the recognition of Africa as a region with special needs and circumstances. This has been a demand from the continent and is backed by IPCC reports, unfortunately, this demand did not even make it to the COP agenda.

Jiata Ekelle of the CSDev Network of Nigeria contributed to this article