African media practitioners have been tasked to take
charge of narratives coming from the continent, says the Executive Director,
Local Development Research Institute (LDRI), Mr. Muchiri Nyaggah, reports
NaijaAgroNet.
This, he said, must be done specifically in the
coverage of agriculture sector whilst enmeshing the narratives with relevant
data in order to tell the stories more explicitly.
Nyaggah gave this charge in a presentation he made
at a three-day Reporting Agriculture workshop in Abidjan, the Cote D’Iviore
capital organised by the Africa Media Initiative (AMI) in conjunction with the World
Bank.
Dwelling on “Using Data in Reporting on Agriculture
in Africa” Nyaggah cited an instance with the recent report on Kibera’s people
which was largely exaggerated to be between 800,00 and 1million people;
purportedly living in the shanty town in an area of only 255 hectares, meaning
that population density is so high that people have only about 1 meter space
per three persons each.
The report, he noted however, added that over
100,000 children were believed to be orphans due to the high incidence, but
according to him, this story was very far away from the truth because it was
being reported from the eyes of foreign media elements in collusion with some
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who did not do their home-works well.
To take charge of the narrative, Nyaggah said Africa
needs evidence to fix it’s challenges, because, “He who has the data controls
the narrative.”
African media practitioners, he said, could only
hold their governments accountable when their stories or narratives are backed
with evidences based on relevant data, giving another instance that the World
Health Organisation (WHO) otherwise known as the World Health Assembly (WHA)
has target on nutrition that there would be about 40 per cent reduction in the
number of children under 5 who are stunted by 2025.
He pointed out that story on nutrition for instance
has data from WHO to back it up, such narrative would make a better sense both
in understanding and seriousness by the authorities, mostly in a developing
economies like Africa.
Nyaggah recalled that in 2014, the African Union Heads
of State and Government recommitted themselves to the Comprehensive Africa
Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) principles and objectives in Malabo.
He emphasised that 65 per cent of Africa’s labour force is employed in the agriculture
sector and contributes just over 30 per
cent of the continent’s GDP, coupled with the increasing need to achieve
food sufficiency for 1.5 billion people by 2020 makes agricultural
transformation pivotal to achieving the Health Policy Initiative (HPI)
objectives.
The LDRI boss, insisted that African media
practitioners have not been very philanthropic with the power of narratives due
to lack of supporting data and enjoined them to explore the use of data in their
editorial contents.
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