In Africa, climate change is now daily life. It is in the floods and the droughts, food prices and water shortages, in land conflicts, mining, energy, migration, health and livelihoods. But in its newsrooms, climate change is not a daily story.
“There is a real tension in African journalism. Climate change… is still often treated like a niche beat or a disaster story, rather than something that cuts across politics, business, health, food, inequality and daily life,” said Sheree Bega, environment reporter and acting news editor at South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.
Dialogue Earth spoke to editors and media leaders in South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana about the state of environmental journalism on the continent. Most said they grapple with one central question: “Are we covering climate because it is dramatic in the moment, or because we understand it as an ongoing public-interest issue that needs sustained reporting?” as Bega put it.
In most newsrooms, editors described climate coverage being triggered by visible events – floods, deaths, storms, droughts or official warnings. “Most times, journalists are in a situation where they are reacting to these, without knowing what happened and the science behind it,” said Mary Mwendwa, editor at Nairobi-based platform Talk Africa. “Climate stories are not very well researched.”
The risk, Mwenda said, is that the media becomes entirely dependent on official prompts. Weather alerts from the government are necessary but other questions fall by the wayside, such as why some places flood repeatedly, why some communities are more exposed. “We need to go beyond these alerts and set the agenda as media,” she said.
Her ideas include a special desk on climate reporting, training for journalists, and a “deliberate effort” by media houses. “Many media houses have political affiliations, and with this kind of setting, politics always takes centre stage. You find climate stories as features within news items, and not as the main or top story.”
But there are some that can spot shoots of change. Joe Ageyo, editor-in-chief of the Nation in Kenya, believes climate reporting has begun to move away from purely episodic coverage. “The doom and gloom that was the hallmark of climate reporting, has given way to something more contextual,” he said. “Climate has become a cross-cutting editorial issue.”
Even if it exists however, that shift is uneven. While some contextual climate journalism is emerging, editors said this largely rests on individual journalists, rather than institutions.
The broken newsroom model
The problem is both structural and editorial.
Climate reporting must be understood within the wider crisis in journalism, Sheree Bega said. Generally speaking it takes a lot of time and money, “exactly the things many newsrooms are struggling to afford”, she said.
External funding has helped build climate journalism across the continent, but when stories depend too heavily on donor support, coverage can become seasonal, theme-driven and vulnerable to external priorities. “Climate stories don’t normally sell, even though they are often impactful,” said Emmanuel Dogbevi, managing editor of Ghana Business News.
Niyonagize Fulgence, a Rwandan journalist and the media coordinator at Fojo Media Institute, said: “Climate stories become more investigative and data-driven mainly when there is external funding or grants available. Otherwise, they are generally reported in the same way as other routine news, often remaining episodic and reactive.”
Bega urged newsrooms to “treat climate reporting as core public-interest journalism, not something that only happens when there is dedicated funding attached to it.”
Sbu Ngalwa, secretary general of the African Editors Forum, said that while grants are not the ultimate solution, in the absence of other sustainable methods of financing journalism, they “help a great deal.” But, he said, donor support must be part of a wider set of interventions that rebuild African newsroom capacity. “We know the business model. It can be fixed,” he said.
Climate reporting is accountability reporting
Newsroom leaders in Africa said another pressure is that climate reporting often runs directly into political power. “Once you start reporting seriously on energy, mining, pollution, land use, infrastructure, adaptation or environmental regulation, you are no longer covering “the environment”; you are covering politics and business in a very direct way,” said Bega.
You will find very few independent critical stories on climate, and more stories quoting political leadership and business leadersEmmanuel Dogbevi, managing editor of Ghana Business News
Dogbevi said that in Ghana too, much climate coverage is still driven by official voices instead of independent reporting. “Most of the stories you will find around, particularly from where I operate, are stories derived from speeches of politicians, workshops by appointees and elected officials, technocrats, and some civil society organisations that end up working in the climate space,” he said. “And so, you will find very few independent critical stories on climate, and more stories quoting political leadership and business leaders,” he said.
Bega warned that climate narratives are written in language that is often benign: development, investment, resilience, sustainability and energy security. Some of this reflects policy work. But some conceals political or corporate interests. “There is a lot of branding around sustainability now, but some of it is clearly greenwashing,” Bega said.
Fulgence of the Fojo Media Institute said: “Other issues, such as environmental degradation linked to mining activities owned by powerful actors, can be more sensitive. In such cases, journalists may hesitate to report due to potential risks, including threats to their safety.”
The development question
Multiple editors told Dialogue Earth that African climate coverage relies too heavily on UN climate summits and other global policy, instead of emanating from the continent’s own development pressures. “Climate reporting in Africa has to be rooted in the realities of the people. It can’t just mirror global narratives or focus only on catastrophe,” Bega said.
Fiona Macleod, based in Johannesburg, and founder of non-profit newsroom the Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism, says she can spot some change around her: “Environmental and climate-related stories were regarded as sort of nice to have … I think many – most – media are now regarding them as ‘we must have.’”
For Oxpeckers, the goal is to examine systems and processes. “We’re not just doing the ‘this is happening today’ … We’re doing a lot more than that … combining traditional investigative reporting techniques with data analysis and geo-mapping,” Macleod said.
What audiences think, and the lack of training
Editors said climate stories often struggle to attract audiences. This tallies with a 2021 Rwandan media consumption survey which found audience interest in climate change stories to be relatively low. Disaster-related stories and weather forecasts ranked higher. “This suggests that audiences are interested in weather information for daily planning, but less engaged with broader climate change issues,” Fulgence said.
Bega says audiences engage when climate reporting is connected to lived reality. “When climate reporting is framed only through policy language or international summits, it can feel distant – but when it’s connected to daily life … people understand very quickly that this is not a future issue, it’s already here,” Bega said.
For Dogbevi, in Ghana, there is also a clear skills gap in African newsrooms: “I don’t think there is enough training on climate reporting, and we need it to ensure competence in climate storytelling.” Ngalwa added that a primary reason has been that newsrooms have “just been trying to stay afloat.” “There’s been very little investment in improving the level of journalism, and the tools of storytelling,” Ngalwa said.
This is in an environment where artificial intelligence and digital tools are beginning to change newsroom workflows. Bega said that while AI can assist with information, the core work of journalism still depends on people, context and power. “Though AI can be useful for handling large volumes of information, it cannot replace talking to people, understanding communities and interrogating power,” she said.
The editors interviewed by Dialogue Earth described a field under pressure. Climate journalism must explain one of the defining public-interest stories of the century while newsrooms are financially strained, politically exposed, understaffed and still learning how to connect climate to daily life. They argued that climate journalism has to become part of the permanent machinery of public-interest reporting.
As the climate story unfolds apace in many African communities, journalism must catch up.
