By Folaranmi Ajayi
The Wits Centre for Journalism together with the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa is implementing a new UNESCO project, funded by the Google News Initiative that seeks to strengthen journalism schools in Africa.
The project was officially launched during a session at a regional conference on the future of journalism education and practice in Eastern Africa, hosted by the UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa and Maseno University in Kenya.
The gathering, which ran from 8-10 February 2023, reviewed the role of media educators in the context of opportunities as well as digital challenges and other threats to journalism in the region.
The new project will include regional consultations with journalism trainers and educators around Africa to develop a set of criteria for ‘excellence’ for journalism education in the region. This will update an earlier initiative by UNESCO begun in 2007 which explored what excellence meant at that historical period.
The project will entail five sub-regional discussions with trainers and educators on the continent. Journalism schools will then be invited to self-assess their education and training programmes based on these criteria and to apply for a small grant to develop responses to gaps they may have identified.
Through the small grants, the project will help 10 journalism schools to improve and update their networking, as well as their current curricula and training programmes. In turn, they should be better able to respond to the major changes in their countries and region.
During the project, an estimated 100 schools will be exposed to new thinking and networking about what ‘excellence’ means for journalism schools in Africa today. In these ways, the project aims to improve the strength and sustainability of the journalism ecosystem in African countries and to help build a “community of practice” amongst journalism teachers and students.
