By Michael Oduor
African Health Solution Journalism Initiative (AHSJI) has plans to introduce Solution Journalism (SoJo) to African academies so as to transform the reporting of health and development issues in Africa.
In a workshop held at Rongo University, Rongo University’s department of Communication, Journalism and Media Studies and AHSJI represented by the project lead Daniel Otunge and media consultant David Aduda signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
Through the collaboration, lecturers from the university’s school of Information, Communication and Media studies will be trained on SoJo while Communication, Media and Journalism students will benefit from internships.
The University will also benefit from resource mobilization through joint proposal writing as well as curriculum development.
The move by AHSJI is to ensure graduates can effectively provide health solutions reports following the SoJo approach, which has a huge potential to bridge the health information gap and help people across Africa cope with various health challenges. The SoJo approach also ensures that the media becomes the watchdog of a society.
Otunge added that AHSJI seeks to train journalists who haven’t been trained on the SoJo approach and the first beneficiaries are journalists from Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.
AHSJI was established by Science Africa in September 2020 with the main objective of improving credibility and effectiveness of media coverage of health and other related development issues pertinent to Africa.
