GIJN Africa: Reporting COVID-19

Media organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa have developed a considerable number of Africa-specific resource guides, tools and tips geared at improving the capacity of journalists across the continent to carry out impactful reporting on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. GIJN has collected many of these resources below.

Telling the story of COVID-19 in Africa: A basket of ideas, ACME (Uganda)

Tips for journalists on COVID-19: Safety and writing tips, Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria)

Why Africa’s journalists aren’t doing a good job on COVID-19, The Conversation (Article by a Kenyan scholar)

E-Tracking map of the #COVID19 in Africa, COVID19 Africa

Mapping the Coronavirus Pandemic in Africa, The Elephant (Kenya)

Coronavirus Africa map: Which countries are most at risk? The Africa Report

Updated – Resources for journalists covering coronavirus, ACME (Uganda)

Update: The Media and COVID-19 in West Africa, MFWA (Ghana)

Coronavirus Safety & Reporting Guide for Journalists, Foroyaa (The Gambia)

Covering COVID-19 in West Africa: Safety Advisory for Journalists, MFWA

Several African countries have gained vast experience dealing with outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Ebola, SARS, Marburg, and Zika viruses. Similarly, media institutions and individual journalists operating, or have done research, in such countries have developed rich resources and guides for covering outbreaks of that nature. The combination of government and media resources can be useful for journalists covering the COVID-19 pandemic today.

Coronavirus: What the world can learn from Ebola fight, ex-Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, writing in the BBC.

How Ebola is helping the Democratic Republic of the Congo prepare for coronavirus disease, WHO Africa

I Lived Through SARS and Reported on Ebola. These Are the Questions We Should Be Asking About Coronavirus, ProPublica (US)

Useful tips for journalists reporting Ebola, ICIR (Nigeria)

How did African journalists experience the Ebola crisis? WFSJ

Reporting health emergency outbreaks: African Journalists on the Frontline of Ebola Coverage, Kingsley Antwi-Boasiako

Ebola lessons from Uganda, The New Humanitarian

GIJN Africa has also translated the GIJN guide for reporting on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic into Kiswahili and Amharic. The two languages are spoken widely across East and parts of central Africa, and Ethiopia and some Horn of Africa countries respectively.

Kiswahili

Mwongozo Kwa Wanahabari Wanaoripoti Kuhusu COVID-19

Amharic

ጠቃሚ ምክሮች ኮሮና ቫይረስን በተመለከተ ለሚዘግቡ ጋዜጠኞች

Find all our COVID-19 resources here.