Journalists sharpen knowledge of the extractives sector reporting

Journalists sharpen knowledge of the extractives sector reporting

By Jonathan Adengo

Journalists from Uganda, Ghana and Tanzania have added yet another skill and knowledge on the extractives sector from a media training which started today in Dar es Salam, Tanzania.

The facilitators, whose engaging style of teaching got all the journalists talking about the extractives sector in their country and took them through the basics of reporting and understanding oil, gas and mining.

Mr. Nicholas Phythian, an Oil and gas consultant along with specialists from National Resource Governance Institute talked about the Natural Resource Decision chain which details the different stages governments and institutions go through when making decisions about exploring and extracting their resources.

The participants were split in to three country groups and tasked to come up with a list of major players in the extractive sector in their countries. "Working in your country groups will allow you to get to know each other and also continue projects when you return to your countries," Mr. Phythian told the class.

The journalists later categorized the companies depending on the different value chains they were operating in the different countries. During the presentations, journalists discovered different companies were involved in the upstream, Midstream and downstream value chain of the extractives sectors of different countries. Uganda for instance, which is looking to start its oil production, has countries in the upstream which are slowly progressing in to the midstream value chain and none in their downstream value chain.

The programme consists of a two weeks workshop and a period in between for the journalists to expand on the sector as they work on their knowledge of the sector as they work to translate what they have learn in to publishable stories.