An active, knowledgeable press plays a critical role in helping the public and parliaments to engage in governance issues, enabling them to hold government and companies more accountable.
However, in many resource-rich countries, journalists lack the information and skills to report and write in depth on oil, gas and mining. Recognizing these challenges, RWI has conducted training programs in Ghana, Uganda, Azerbaijan and Iraq to promote effective, consistent media oversight of oil, gas and mining. The programs seek to increase the number and quality of print, television and radio stories, and develop training tools that are self-sustaining in these countries and replicable in others.
Meet both classes of RWI's media training pilot program.
CLASS ONE
GHANA
Frederick Asiamah
Since 2005, Frederick has been working with Public Agenda, Ghana's only advocacy and development newspaper. He is a staff writer and lead reporter on natural resources, environment (including oil and gas) and climate change. His first beat was education, before he switched to covering disability, business and water and sanitation. Although he initially found the extractive industry very technical and complex, RWI's media training has enabled Frederick to become a more critical thinker on oil, gas and mining issues, meticulously looking for detail and asking tougher questions. He regularly serves as a resource person at the media-civil society workshop on oil and gas and is committed to continue mentoring his colleagues through his editorial work.
Kumah Drah
Kumah is the assistant director of radio news at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, a position he will leave at the end of 2011. He has spent his career as a broadcast and print journalist and managing and training radio newsroom staff and community radio volunteers. He is a trainer for the Ghana Community Radio Network (GCRN) and established its News Exchange. He is a correspondent for the Panos Institute of West Africa and a mentor for Deutsche Welle's East4South Program. While covering the Euro Development Days in Brussels in February 2011, Kumah was thrilled to witness the launch of the first Revenue Watch Index. During the training he hosted several expert instructors on Radio Ghana's flagship program, "Behind the News," and has since encouraged his colleagues to become more interested in oil, gas and mining issues.
Stephen Yeboah
Stephen has been a freelance journalist since 2009 and is currently a correspondent for www.ghanabusinessnews.com. He has written extensively about Ghana's oil, gas and mining sector and has more than 35 feature and news stories to his credit. He is passionate about raising awareness on issues that will help Ghana avoid the "resource curse."
UGANDA
Michael Baleke
Michael is a senior reporter with NTV Uganda–a television station under the Nation Media Group. He has been in journalism for almost a decade, reporting on a wide range of subjects including health, the environment, politics, social development and business. He recently added oil and gas to his areas of interest and has become NTV's go-to reporter for these issues. Since participating in the RWI media training program, he has completed several stories on extractives, notably a special report that used his investigations in Ghana to elaborate lessons for Uganda. He believes his best work on oil and gas is yet to come.
Ibrahim Kasita
Ibrahim is a senior reporter at New Vision. He focuses on development issues and has seven years' experience covering the extractive industries, energy resources and infrastructure. He is the founder of the Uganda Energy Journalists Association, a body that unites journalists covering the country's energy and oil industries. Since completing the RWI media training program, Ibrahim has broken a number of major stories, including an investigation of oil rigs that are lying idle, at great cost to Ugandan taxpayers, and another about the shortage of oil and gas skills among Ugandan citizens. Ibrahim believes that New Vision is now able to monitor the full range of oil, gas and mineral activities and is in position to expose bad sector policies and industry practices.
Esther Nakkazi
Esther is a correspondent for The EastAfrican, a regional weekly newspaper that circulates in Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. She is also a science reporter, researcher and trainer, and her work appears regularly in media outlets around the world. A 2007/2008 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Esther had reported frequently on oil, gas and mining issues prior to joining the RWI training program in 2010. She recalls that back then, information was not as tightly guarded as it is today. One of her earliest stories on extractives was published in The EastAfrican in 2006: "Country strikes oil, gives away 70 percent share." While the story generated public debate, the government became less forthcoming with information about the sector. Esther considers the RWI training a breakthrough that has introduced her to previously "unavailable" sources and the skills to track company progress in the field.
Joseph Olanyo
Joseph is a reporter for East African Business Week, a regional business newspaper published in Kampala and circulating in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Until December 2009, Joseph worked with the Daily Monitor and New Vision, Uganda's two leading dailies. Joseph started his journalism career over 10 years ago as a freelance writer, focusing frequently on thefinancial sector. Although his initial interest was in covering business, Uganda's discovery of oil and gas spurred his desire to cover the energy sector. The RWI media training program has deepened his knowledge of the industry. His numerous international reporting projects have included work on Uganda's global trading system, the World Trade Organization Doha Development Round talks and the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
Gerald Tenywa
Gerald is a senior reporter at New Vision, who has reported on environmental issues for the past decade. From 2001 to 2004, he worked as a freelance journalist for New Vision, where he was attached to the features desk and investigated environmental issues. He became a staff reporter in 2004, covering news. Gerald's interest in covering the environment was nurtured by his background training in forestry and his admiration for Uganda's pioneering and world-renowned environmental journalist, the late Ndyakira Amooti. Gerald has won many awards for his outstanding reporting, including, in 2010 and 2011, the Sustainable Tourism Awards from STAR-Uganda, a USAID project in Uganda's oil-rich Albertine region. This year he won the Ozone Africa Media Award from the United Nations Environment Program. Since his participation in RWI's media training program, he has written stories on the impact of the oil sector on the environment and people's livelihoods.
Michael Wambi
Michael is a reporter and producer for the Uganda Radio Network's "National Perspective" magazine program, which is distributed weekly to 53 FM stations in Uganda. He worked as head of news for Voice of Teso radio for over five years and investigated human rights, environment and HIV/AIDS stories. He also worked with the Vision Group as head of radio features until 2009 when he joined URN. He has produced several investigative articles and radio features for the Inter Press Service Africa bureau. His articles have also been featured in the Mail and Guardian, The EastAfrican and several Swedish newspapers. He has been associated with PANOS London, writing articles on the environment and development. Michael has won several journalism awards in Uganda, including the Uganda investigative journalism awards in 2007. He is one of the leading radio journalists covering oil and gas in Uganda.
CLASS TWO
GHANA
Bashiru Adam
Bashiru is a senior reporter at The Finder who began working in journalism in 2004. He worked with Metro TV for a year until October 2005 and then moved on to Public Agenda, where he worked from 2007 to 2011. Adam has reported on natural resource and environmental issues and has been recognized twice for his work: first by CARE International in 2009 for his writings on natural resource governance, and then by the Ghana Journalists Association as best features writer of 2011. His interest in the extractive sector comes from his belief in the media’s duty to ensure judicious and fair distribution of natural resource wealth.
Lorrencia Adam
Lorrencia is a reporter at Choice FM. Over the last two years her focus has been on business-related news and she is a member of the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists--Ghana. The discovery of oil and gas in Ghana in 2008 stimulated her curiosity about the sector. She has since dedicated her work to educating the public, investors and analysts about the national interest in the oil and gas industry. She believes that turning detailed information about oil and gas into concise news reports is the way to draw her radio listeners into an understanding of issues affecting the sector.
Edward Ameh
Edward is the Ashanti regional correspondent for Net2 TV. He started out as a reporter with Ghana Television. He previously worked with Life Star Media Consult, a media consultancy firm, as head of research. He is now looking to build his knowledge of the extractive industries so as to report comprehensively and accurately about the sector.
Ivan Domasaa
Ivan started his journalism career in 1997, the year community station Radio Progress began broadcasting. A language teacher, Ivan was eventually engaged as a news reader but learned to report and produce programs through in-service training by the Ghana Community Radio Network. Since 2003, he has produced programs on topics like health, environment, education, local governance, women and children. His interest in the extractive industries stems from his interest in human rights concerns in the mining industry. He wants to learn as much as possible about mining operations and laws so he can educate his community from an informed position.
Jeorge Kingson
Jeorge is deputy editor and parliamentary correspondent for Businessweek Africa. He also doubles as secretary to Ghana's Parliamentary Press Corps. He was previously the features editor at Corporate Guardian magazine. Jeorge recently joined eTV Ghana as producer of the morning show "Awake." He aspires to become an authority on Ghana's extractive industry.
Pascal Kudiabor
Pascal is a reporter with ghanabusinessnews.com, an online news portal. He got his start in journalism in 1993, coming from a background of writing short stories. He has since ventured into feature articles and reported for Financial Intelligence as well.
Benjamin Tetteh
Benjamin is a radio reporter at Joy FM and has been practicing journalism since 2000. He is passionate about business reporting and has covered several assignments relating to oil and gas legislation. He has also handled several major local, national and international assignments, including the last three presidential and parliamentary elections, the 2007 African Union Summit, the German-African Partnership Summit, UNCTAD 12, and the "Image of Asia" media conference in Denmark in 2003. His goal is to improve his investigative skills for covering oil and gas stories and to establish authoritative community-based sources of information.
UGANDA
Felix Basiime
Felix has been practicing journalism for about 12 years. Currently a bureau chief for the western region at the Daily Monitor, he has previously worked for Weekly Topic, New Vision and Orumuri. He was awarded for best investigative journalism in the print category for the western region of Uganda in 2005 and 2007. He has also been recognized by the Daily Monitor as the best performing bureau chief in 2010. The region he oversees is where Uganda's oil, gas and minerals, such as copper and lime, are found, and is also a highly sensitive area ecologically. Felix is particularly interested in the relationship between extractives and the environment.
Isaac Imaka
Isaac is a staff reporter covering parliament and politics at the Daily Monitor. He started as a freelance journalist in 2008 when he was attached to parliament as a trainee reporter. He was then recruited to attend the Nation Media Group's media lab and one-year editorial training program in Nairobi. Following the parliamentary beat will enable him to do informative and accurate reporting on a wide range of extractive issues.
Mary Karugaba
Mary is a senior parliamentary reporter with New Vision and has been at her job for six years. She has covered a number of local and international stories including economic, social and political issues. She hopes to be able to deal with the challenges of reporting constructively and objectively on the extractive sector, taking into account the sensitivities that have come with the discovery of oil and gas in Uganda.
Halima Abdallah Kisule
Halima is a special correspondent with The EastAfrican, a weekly newspaper that focuses on regional news, analyses and features. She worked at The Observer for three years after having moved from the Daily Monitor, where she was for two and a half years. Halima won the 2010 CNN-Multichoice Africa Journalist Award for environmental reporting. She is looking to deepen her understanding of the oil and gas industry, which she believes will enhance her confidence in contributing to the media's oversight role for the sector.
Assad Mugenyi
Assad has been with The CEO Magazine since 2008, having started his journalism career in 2005. He started at the Evening Mail and then in 2006 moved on to Red Pepper, where he set up a business news desk and rose to the position of assistant news editor. He joined The CEO Magazine when it was a nascent monthly business journal. Given the interest in Uganda's emerging oil and gas sector, Assad believes that the extractive industries present many exciting issues for a journalist to cover, which is why he is passionate about packaging information in ways that will appeal to his readers.
Moses Talemwa
Moses is a reporter with The Observer. He started his career in 1996 as a journalist for Radio One. In 2006 he joined WBS TV as news editor, a position he held for 18 months before joining The Observer. He specializes in education and business news features and is expanding his scope to cover oil and gas.
Coletta Wanjohi
Coletta has been a journalist for about four years and specializes in television production, most recently with WBS TV. Her work has ranged from news reporting and production to presentating a weekly business magazine and news anchoring. She blogs regularly on oil and gas and believes that increasing her knowledge of the extractive industries will broaden her reporting and presentation of issues about the sector. She is keen to translate the subject of oil and gas, generally considered complex, into more comprehensible information for TV viewers.
