Twitter Partners With Amref Health Africa To Train African Journalists
Twitter and Amref Health Africa, a leading Nairobi-based health development organisation, and Twitter, world-wide social media platform, have announced their continued collaboration in providing skills and capacity-building training in the best practices for health reporting. This revelation came upon the heels of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the growing concerns about recently reported cases of monkeypox across the continent.
Ever since the launch in 2020, the media scholarship programme by Amref Health Africa in partnership with Amref International University and Twitter, has awarded many high achieving African journalists with scholarships to pursue Health Communication and Journalism courses.
The purpose of their partnership, which has been renewed in 2022, is to enhance knowledge, build skills and nurture the competencies of journalists, public relations professionals and health managers on all aspects related to health reporting.
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Elizabeth Ntonjira, Global Communication Director at Amref, stated that “The role of media in enhancing public health information is indisputable. Media advocacy for health ensures that the right information gets to the people in order to make informed decisions and also, the right policies are enacted and implemented to achieve a country’s health goals. Media practitioners must, therefore, have the right skills and capacity to contribute to improving the health of populations effectively and that’s the goal of this course. This partnership with Twitter is critical in ensuring that media practitioners are knowledgeable, equipped and empowered to tackle health related stories that impact communities”
Since 2020, Twitter’s financial contribution to the programme has enabled over 40 journalists and health communication professionals to attend the course and strengthen their health reporting skills.
Emmanuel Lubanzadio, Head of Public Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa, said that, “We have always prioritised using the positive power of Twitter to strengthen our communities by surfacing credible, authoritative information. Journalism is core to our service and we have a deep and enduring responsibility to protect that work. We are therefore committed to supporting Amref in their efforts towards ensuring ethical health reporting, in order to help people find reliable information both online and offline.”
The first session of the scholarship programme was held between the 9th of November and the 4th of December 2020, with 15 participants successfully completing the course. Tuition for the second session had taken place between the 9th of August and the 3th of September 2021, with another set of 25 candidates that would be attending the course. This year, 10 participants are expected to fully complete the course.
