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AAP brownbag lunch highlights successes of Media Capacity Building Project
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On Thursday, January 5th, 2012, the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) held a brownbag lunch event on AAP’s Media Capacity Building Project (MCBP). MCBP, from its base in Nairobi, is supporting the professional development of journalists in all twenty AAP countries. The project was launched in November 2010 in coordination with the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (SU/SSC).
The event opened with remarks from Mami Yamada, Chief of the Division for Partnership and Resource Mobilization for SU/SSC. South-South cooperation is a broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.
"The Special Unit for South-South Cooperation contributes to the solidarity among peoples of the South and builds the capacity of developing countries to identify, analyze and solve their development issues,” said Ms. Yamada.
Ms. Yamada added, “In the context of South-South cooperation, MCBP is building self-reliance among journalists in Africa to better inform the climate change debate in their respective countries. Journalists trained by the AAP are sharing knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through their coordinated efforts.”
Ms. Yamada’s opening remarks were followed by a presentation by Jacqueline Frank, the Regional Project Coordinator of MCBP. Ms. Frank discussed MCBP’s recent activities, including the kick-off training of trainers workshop in Nairobi, which covered all twenty AAP countries. She also described a series of national and regional workshops which followed that have taken place in eleven AAP countries. These workshops bring together journalists to build their understanding of climate science, new social media and the linkages between climate and gender.
MCBP’s strategy was to create four clusters of AAP countries – five countries in each cluster – two Anglophone and two Francophone. One senior journalist acts as the Team Leader for each cluster. These Team Leaders have taken the initiative to develop the community of practice among their cluster of countries through smaller workshops. To date, 215 journalists from nineteen AAP countries have been trained through MCBP’s workshops.
Furthermore, MCBP has launched a Facebook page to assist in building a network of journalists within the African continent. MCBP’s media resource directory also provides background information for journalists on climate science and data for their reference.
In December 2011, MCBP supported five young African journalists to travel with the “We Have Faith – Act for Climate Justice” caravan, which began in Nairobi and passed through six African countries on its way to the COP 17 climate change negotiations in Durban. The campaign called for leaders to fight for a just and legally binding climate treaty. From the road, the AAP-sponsored journalists chronicled their experiences. An additional four senior African journalists were chosen to participate in COP 17. They were trained by MCBP prior to the negotiations and spent two weeks in Durban reporting on the conference.
An engaging Q&A session followed. A number of issues were raised, including the sustainability of the project, after the AAP’s end date.
In response to this, Ms. Frank said that MCBP is carrying out a number of activities to ensure that journalists can continue to provide a forum for discussion and track this important issue after the lifetime of AAP.
“The structure of the project is to identify and use African expertise: the trainers, the climate change science specialists, the gender experts: as much as possible we endeavor to use local experts in each country. In addition to building relationships between media and scientists, the increased understanding and skills of workshop participants ensures sustainability. They will not need UNDP to find and make use of one another in future,” said Ms. Frank.
The event closed with remarks from Takeshi Kohno, Special Advisor and Senior Programme Advisor for Japan Affairs at the Bureau for External Relations and Advocacy (BERA). Mr. Kohno explained that AAP and MCBP are closely aligned with Japan’s overseas development assistance goals. Japan plans to commit $80 million to UNDP’s core funding and $306 million to non-core funding in 2012.
Mr. Kohno also commented on AAP’s scale and innovative approaches: “AAP’s Media Capacity Building Project as explained in today’s session, demonstrated its catalytic role to increase awareness of climate change in African journalism. As Prime Minister of Japan Mr. Noda proclaimed in the UN General Assembly meeting in September 2011, the Japanese Government will host the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 5) in 2013. I hope that MCBP will be a great example among AAP projects which can proudly be said as a successful outcome of this visionary program leading up to TICAD 5,” concluded Mr. Kohno.
AAP is a flagship programme of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), established in 2008 in partnership with UNIDO, UNICEF and WFP, and funded by a $92.1 million grant from the Government of Japan. The programme assists the governments of twenty African countries to promote integrated and comprehensive approaches to climate change adaptation. For more information on the Africa Adaptation Programme, please visit www.undp-aap.org.
