GIJN Webinars for African Journalists: Investigating Company Finances
Editor’s note: These webinars have now taken place. You can see the recording of the first session on GIJN’s YouTube channel. We did not record the second session due to its format.
Newsrooms in Africa are shrinking rapidly and experienced journalists are leaving the media in large numbers. One of the beats hardest hit is accountability journalism, including investigative reporting on companies and businesses, government corruption, and organized crime. Young reporters, often without training, have few opportunities for watchdog journalism.
But quality work continues to be done, and for those committed to watchdog reporting, “following the money” is essential. Tracking financial flows can help verify legitimate transactions and establish evidence of how criminals steal, hide, and invest their funds. Understanding how to analyze company accounts is key to this.
GIJN is pleased to partner with Finance Uncovered, a UK-based investigative journalism training and reporting project, to organize two webinars on how to investigate company finances. While journalists anywhere are able to attend, the focus will be on Africa.
The first webinar takes place on Thursday 17 June at 11:00 a.m. in Lagos / 12:00 p.m. in Johannesburg / 1:00 p.m. in Nairobi, followed by a second interactive session on Wednesday 23 June at the same times.
The first, a two-hour webinar tailored for entry level reporting on company accounts, covers basic accounting concepts for journalists. It will also unpack financial statements, explaining the formats and line items to prioritize while reporting.
After the first session, participants will be sent an exercise to input and analyze data from a financial statement. At the second session, participants will review the exercise with the trainers and ask questions.
The two webinars will be led by Nick Mathiason, a founder and co-director of Finance Uncovered. Mathiason has been a business and financial journalist for close to 30 years and has broken stories with international impact.
Watch our Twitter feed @gijn and newsletter for details on future events.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
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