Cold beer, roast goat and hot science journalism in Uganda

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Cold beer, roast goat and hot science journalism in Uganda

Beer for refreshment, roast goat for nourishment, music for dancing and science for thinking. That was the first conference of the Uganda Science Journalists' Association

Meeting in the capital city of Kampala in late November, about 150 people jammed (and jolled) inside the Imperial Royale Hotel for two days, courtesy of hard work by people such as Peter Wamboga-Mugirya, a freelance journalist and director of information and communication at the Science Foundation for Livelihoods and Development, which hosted the conference secretariat.

One of the main conference organisers was William Odinga Balikuddembe, a freelance journalist who also writes for a project run by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO-Nile, which intends to help the ten different countries responsible for the Nile River to preserve and use its life-giving waters as it meanders down from Uganda to empty into the Mediterranean sea.

“A conference of journalists, scientists and researchers in a country where science is grossly underreported and poorly articulated would strike a fairly visible mark,” Odinga told the World Federation of Science Journalists. And so it did.

The conference opened with a warning from former rebel soldier, HIV/AIDS activist (and president since 1986) Yoweri Museveni, in a letter read by Uganda's minister of information, communication and technology, Ham Mulira
Museveni described Africa as ''the most backward continent in the world” and attributed much of that to ''backwardness in science and technology.”

Backwardness in science journalism is another issue. There have been other conferences on African science journalism, notably the African Science Communication conference African Science Communication conference in South Africa in 2006, which held its followup meeting - again, in South Africa - in February 2009.

And there are African science journalism workshops - including the second Reporting Science conference organised earlier the same month in Johannesburg by Charmeela Bhagowat and Debby Kramer of FrayInterMedia, with the help of the governmental South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement. And now the world's biggest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has met in South Africa to chart a way forward in the same terrain (see here)

But the quality and the quantity of science journalism remains low, with expensive access to slow internet and email, isolation and the lack of international publications and contacts a definite restriction, according to Ugandan conference organisers such as Edris Kiggundu, a senior reporter with the Weekly Observer, news editor Henry Lutaaya from The Sunrise, graphic designer James Wevugira of IVAD Productions and Sarah Zawedde of Bukedde/New Vision.

Nonetheless, the Ugandan conference, according to visiting Canadian science broadcasting professor Kathryn O’Hara from Carleton University, was impressive. O’Hara chose to focus her interventions on detailing the conflict that often arises between scientists and journalists because of different timetables. Scientific research can span years, even decades. Reporters face daily - sometimes hourly - deadlines. Each fails to understand the work culture of the other.

As Museveni said in his speech, “there is a need to bridge the existing gap between journalists and scientists.'' Why? ''I am told there are lots of scientific findings from laboratories whose findings have not reached the end-users,'' his speech read.

Where to start?

One discussion involved Angelo Izama, special projects co-ordinator for Kampala’s Daily Monitor newspaper, considered the country's only independent newspaper, who also finds the time to host an interview show called Hot Seat on the newspaper's sister radio station, the English-language KFM. Izama said low pay for journalists led to high staff turnover. That in turn allowed non-governmental organisations to snatch good journalists, he said, calling for a Ugandan science and technology press agency to combat the brain drain.

The pressure to give up is intense. Veteran journalist Patrick Nkono Luganda - chief executive officer of the Farmers Media Link centre, publisher of Farmer’s Voice newspaper and chairperson of a network of climate journalists - told how his friend and mentor, the German author and science journalist Hajo Neubert, had to talk him out of the temptation to abandon journalism for consulting work. Luganda was a member of the world's first science journalism mentoring program, which will have a graduation ceremony in June/July 2009 at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London.

Esther Nakkazi, who covers science for the regional weekly business newspaper The East African and recently graduated from the prestigious Knight Science journalism fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA, said her mentor - senior Kenyan journalist Otulah Owuor - encouraged her to get new contacts to sell her work, boosted her confidence at press conferences and reinforced her desire to apply for graduate studies.

Aimable Twahirwa from Agence Rwandaise d’Information in Kigali - who along with Esther had just returned from Bamako, Mali, where they reported on the Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health - said mentoring with longstanding Senegalese science journalist Armand Faye helped him develop a stronger story sense.

Further up the government food chain, there was a reportback from the Ugandan Academy of Science, which started up again in 2000 after a hiatus during the brutal military dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s. The Academy is now run by president Paul Mugambi. The Academy reported on its new "pairing" program, in which three scientists have gone with parliamentarians to their constituencies to find better ways to relate science to the voting public and learn how to communicate better to policymakers.

Exhibitions at the conference were diverse, showing the influence of organisers such as Arthur Makara from the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, and Nurudean Sempa from the Agency for Science and Technology Advancement in Uganda. Exhibitions explored communicating science in ways that ranged from the sophisticated to the humble. One agriculture scientist showed how just a simple thing like relabelling packages of potato seeds packages helped farmers how to improve their planting techniques.

During a Lake Victoria field trip, reporters aboard the Uganda fisheries research vessel Ibis watched as the crew trawled for half an hour for a meagre catch – one good size mud fish and six minnows. The catch was evidence of what Ugandan and Tanzanian scientists are up against – the deliberately introduced Nile Perch, whose depredations were described in the documentary film Darwin’s Nightmare. Clearly, it helps to have Isaac Mukobe, head of information, communication and outreach at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute, also on the conference organising commmittee.

Delegates gather outside the Imperial Royale Hotel. Front row centre, straight and tall, Ham Mulira, Uganda’s minister of information, communication and technology. He is flanked by conference organizer William Odinga on his left, and Kathryn O’Hara of WFSJ on his right.

More information:

http://www.wfsj.org/news/news.php?id=130

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March 2009	Insight/Opinion

Insight/Opinion