THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

• Follow-up with training participantsIntroductionPurpose and Scope of the ProjectIn the Fall of 2008, the International Media and Communications program at Columbia University’sSchool of International and Public Affairs proposed writing a report on the state of journalism inthree Anglophone African countries – Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda – that have growing orestablished extractive industries. In close partnership with Revenue Watch International, the projectmoved forward. The idea evolved into a report that would serve as a guide for organizationsconsidering establishing journalist-training programs in these countries.This report, then, is intended to provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities in thejournalism profession in these three countries. It especially seeks to shed light on the question ofwhether programs that train journalists can improve reporting on the extractive industries, and if so,what kinds of training are most effective.Journalism covering the extractive industries – including oil, mining and gas – is of particular interestto anyone who believes that transparency in governance, business and politics is an important aspectof development in Africa. Much is made in development literature of the “resource curse” – the ideathat when a large proportion of a country’s economy relies on the extraction of a single naturalresource, it can retard the country’s development. However, a glance around the world reveals thatnot all resource-reliant countries suffer from the same development problems, if they do at all.In Africa more than any other continent, the extractive industries seem to be consistently tied toinequality, strife and underdevelopment. African countries’ unique problems point to their commonhistory as colonized lands. European powers designed their colonies’ land-ownership norms,political boundaries, institutions and economies to facilitate exploitation – not development. Even asAfrican countries broke free of their colonizers, they inherited many of these arrangements. It maybe symptomatic of this history that, in contrast to other oil producing regions, where oil exploitationis a state-owned venture, it is almost completely dependent on foreign investment, especially fromU.S. companies, in West and Central Africa. 1It is an assumption of this report’s authors that a thriving journalism profession can be an importantpart of improving this situation. Good journalism – and active media consumers – will help citizensbe better informed about the relationship between extractive industries, government and the broadereconomy. Journalists can reveal revenue flows and decision-making processes that affect entirecountries. With this knowledge, citizens can play more active roles in their countries’ destinies andmake their resources a blessing rather than a curse.This report examines the experiences, opinions and recommendations of nearly 100 professionaljournalists, academics and media experts in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. Our interviews focused onpainting a fuller picture of the media landscape, challenges journalists face and lessons learned frompast trainings in each country. We especially targeted business and economic journalists who hadtaken part in training programs, for two reasons. One, journalists who currently specialize in theextractives are a relative rarity in these countries. Two, there have been a dearth of trainings for1 Duffield, John S., Over a Barrel: the Costs of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence, 2008, p. 146– 2 –