Zambia Monitor in Ghana for capacity-building workshop on reporting debt, finance issues

Zambia Monitor is among the media houses in Africa which have been selected to participate at the third edition of the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) Media Initiative set to take off Wednesday in Ghana.

Zambia Monitor Correspondent, Buumba Chimbulu, will represent the organization at the workshop.

AFRODAD and Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) will be hosting the third AFRODAD Media Initiative (AFROMEDI III) in Accra, Ghana from March 29 to March 31, 2023 under the theme “Towards media’s greater transparency and accountability for sustainable public debt management.”

This year, participants have been drawn from 31 African countries including Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Konakry, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Swaziland, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

AFROMEDI seeks to build capacity of journalists on debt and development with integrated and practical sessions that strengthen participating journalists’ reporting skills on debt and related issues.

Countries’ selection was guided by their debt sustainability status which assesses macroeconomic circumstances and the ability to service debt.

In the past, AFRODAD hosted media training sessions in various countries such as Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia.

The programme has now scaled up to a continental level with the maiden AROMEDI I held in June 2021 and AFROMEDI II in March 2022.

The objective of the workshop is, therefore, to contribute to journalists’ existing knowledge and understanding of debt management and related financing issues in Africa.

The workshop is also aimed at empowering participants with principles of transparency, accountability and good governance, and effectively promoting them for sustainable debt management.

Exchanging innovative and effective techniques for finding hidden information and overcoming challenges to expression and using formal and informal channels for maximum impact is another objective of the training.

AFROMEDI III comes at a time when Africa is threatened with a debt crisis and attempts to deal with this predicament beyond Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI).

These include: the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) which postponed debt payment up to December 2021 to permit countries save up resources to combat the adverse effects of covid19; and, the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatment Beyond DSSI which has so far received response from Chad, Ethiopia, Zambia and most recently Ghana.

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