Reporting Local Governance and Community Participation
21 -25 January 2008
Pemba, Mozambique

With training and on-site production provided by CMFD (Community Media for development) Productions, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organised a 5-day workshop to build the interest, knowledge and capacity of radio journalists to investigate and report on local governance, issues, and initiatives affecting the community. This workshop involved 14 participants from radio stations in the northern region of Mozambique. Through a combination of seminars, discussion and practical exercises, participants both learned about local government and community participation, and completed practical work interviewing and creating radio programmes. Programmes produced during the workshop, and distributed to participants, were about diverse governance issues such as how the fishing industry and eco-tourism plays a vital role with the social and economic health of the community, high crime in the area, malaria, and the lack of accommodation for secondary school learners. It is an important aspect of the media in a democracy, particularly in developing countries and countries where media and democracy are still evolving, that journalists be trained to interrogate issues based on legislation and stated government commitments, as a way of holding them accountable.

Reporting on Women’s Rights in legal frameworks
3 – 7 December 2007, Maputo, Mozambique

Designed and implemented by CMFD and supported by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, this 5-day workshop brought together 8 women radio journalists from community and national radio stations in Mozambique to build capacity on and create 4 Portuguese-language radio programmes on women's rights within legal frameworks.  The Africa Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa has been recognised as a continental legal framework for the protection of women’s rights in Africa. The ability of media and journalists to report on the Protocol and other such legal commitments and the issues that they address, is key to ensuring that these rights become a reality on the ground. While there is growing awareness among journalists about women’s issues, there is still significant problems related to how women appear in the media, and few have the knowledge of legal frameworks in place that would make for stronger reporting. Rather than report on women’s rights in an abstract manner, there is a need to build capacity of journalists to report on what leaders have committed to, a as way of holding leaders accountable.

Power Reporting
1 – 8 September 2007, Johannesburg, South Africa
As an add on activity to build on the Power Reporting Workshop held in Johannesburg 3-5 September to improve investigative journalism coverage in the region, on behalf of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) CMFD Productions worked with a selection of journalists from Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, and Malawi to produce audio programming around the ideas generated by the workshop. This included facilitating a planning workshop, providing voice recorders, daily editorial meetings of the course of the interview day, providing studio recording and production. The group produced two English programmes. The first focuses on the state of investigative journalism in Africa, based on information and interviews from the presenters and participants in the 3-day PRW. The second explores migration to South Africa based on interviews in the community.