The African Women Journalism Project was launched in July last year to help women in East and West Africa rise through the ranks of their newsrooms and cover under-reported stories throughout covid-19. Project director reflects on the impact of this initiative
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When the Africa Women Journalism Project was launched last July, it sought to give women journalists in the region the knowledge, skills and support needed to cover the most under-reported stories.
Grant-funded by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) and led by ICFJ fellow Catherine Gicheru, a veteran journalist based in Kenya, it set out to provide mentorships and support to newsrooms across five countries in East and West Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda.
The timing was not an accident. Newsrooms were seeing mass-redundancies as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with women being the first to go. Virtual reporting alternatives were much less used for under-reported stories in rural areas. Plus, many of these stories centred around sensitive gender-based subjects like female genital mutilation or access to family planning services, as well as stories which have emerged throughout covid-19.
In this week's episode of the Journalism.co.uk, Gicheru talks more about the mission of AWJP and how supporting women journalists helps cover more of these under-reported stories, which ultimately contributes to meaningful societal change.
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