African Water Journalists Network Launched

Annan

The network was launched during a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) celebration of World Water Day. The ceremony, attended by Ethiopian President Ato Girma Wolde Giorigis and Ethiopian Water Resources Minister Shiferaw Jarso was also addressed by satellite by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The journalist network, initiated by Quest Ltd, a company of journalists focused on development issues, and the Amsterdam-based Water Foundation, was launched in cooperation with UN Water/Africa, a cluster of UN specialized agencies that work on water issues. The cluster includes UNECA, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Human Settlement Program (UN-HABITAT), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program. 

Africa a Priority

The announcement of the media network was part of UNECA’s launch of an international decade designed to further fulfill the UN’s Millennium Development Goal to increase by 2015 by half the number of people with access to clean water and sanitation. Africa is the continent where the situation is most dire.

“We need to increase water efficiency, especially in agriculture. We need to free women and girls from the daily chore of hauling water, often over great distances. We must involve them in decision-making on water management. We need to make sanitation a priority. This is where progress is lagging most,” Mr. Annan said in his video message.

“Today, poor people in peri-urban communities in Africa pay 3 to 10 times more for water than people in urban centers who have access to piped safe water...millions of our children die needlessly from water-borne diseases which have been eradicated elsewhere,” added UNECA Deputy Executive Secretary Josephine Ouedraogo in her address to the gathering.

Overwhelming Response

Quest CEO and veteran foreign correspondent James M. Dorsey told the audience that more than 1,000 journalists had been invited to join the media network and that the response had been overwhelming.

“Most African journalists are poorly paid and poorly trained. They have few resources and are often badly treated and viewed as a tool to be manipulated. Writing a penetrating story is risky in Africa. The reward could be the sack or worse, physical punishment. With today’s launch of the Africa Water Journalist Network, Quest and the Water Foundation hope to contribute to changing this situation,” Mr. Dorsey said.

The network would supply journalists with better information, help them get access to sources and provide them with an outlet for their talent, Mr. Dorsey said. The network’s international editors, who built their careers in some of the world’s most respected media organizations, will help journalists create better stories by digging deeper and being more investigative and by writing crisper and clearer.

Mr. Dorsey said the African Water Journalist Network would support journalists when they feel threatened or abused and will reward them for their work. Journalists will further have an opportunity to write more freely, more impressionalistically and more personally when contributing to the network’s blog.

“We all know the issues of water; that without access to clean water and sanitation a developing country cannot develop; that it is uneconomic for children and women to wait for hours every day to fill up jugs of water; that it’s unhealthy; that up to 80 percent of killer diseases are preventable. But how do people know how to prevent these diseases if nobody tells them? This is where the media – newspapers, radio and television - have a key role to play,” Mr. Dorsey said. “And that is where the African Water Journalist Network will make its mark,” Mr. Dorsey told Ethiopian reporters after the ceremony.

To join the network, please register at: www.africawaterjournalists.org