#PeriodismoÁfrica | Namibia

Casa África finds it is absolutely necessary and urgent to help improve the communication on the African continent, a region that the Western media tends to ignore and which, in terms of our country's interest, is increasingly important. The fight against stereotypes in the narratives about Africa has been a constant for the institution, with initiatives as such as the publication Si hablas de nosotros (“If you talk about us”) or the creation of the Saliou Traoré Prize for journalism in Spanish on Africa.  

Other successful examples are the Africa-Spain Journalists' Meetings, that have brought together a large number of Spanish journalists specializing in Africa and African journalists. However, the pandemic forced us to resituate ourselves, to abandon meetings of this type momentarily and to direct budget and efforts towards other formulas that continued to serve these purposes. Now, one of our new focus areas is training aimed to combat a plague of our times: disinformation.   

These reasons have led to the creation of a specialized training course for African journalists in verifying and combating hoaxes, which began last year in Nairobi and now reaches its second edition in Windhoek. Representatives of renowned media such as Newtral and Maldita.es are taking part in this course, as well as an African journalist with experience in the fact checking sector, thanks to a fluid and fruitful collaboration with Africa Check, a leading initiative in this field.

The journalists in charge of the training are:

• TOMÁS RUDICH,

the Debunking Editor at Newtral.es, a Spanish organization member of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) since 2018. He has previously worked as an editor at the DPA news agency for eight years. He has also collaborated in media such as Clarín (Argentina) or El Confidencial (Spain). He has a degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

• ANDRÉS JIMÉNEZ MACKELLAR,

the Debunking Editor at Maldita.es, a Spanish fact-checking organization, where he has also been a reporter since 2018. Prior to that, he founded a fact-checking project called Facterbot and worked as an editor at the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE. Andrés has offered many media literacy workshops and participated in international counter  disinformation seminars.

• KEEGAN LEECH, 

a researcher at Africa Check, the continent’s first independent non-profit fact-checking organisation. He holds a  bachelor of sciences in English literature, applied mathematics, and physics and electronics. His work as a fact-checker has covered topics such as health misinformation, migration, and misleading statistics. And he’s run many training sessions sharing Africa Check’s methods with students, journalists, and other fact-checkers.

Spain is one of the countries in the world where the media have stood out the most for fact checking and the advance in innovative data verification techniques. Media such as Newtral or Maldita.es have received international recognition and have joined the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN). Africa Check is a reference in this work of verification and the fight against hoaxes, especially focused on the African media landscape and which has contributed decisively to combating propaganda, hate speech and, above all, disinformation in such sensitive times as the elections. 

In Namibia, we repeat the formula of a two-day intensive course and a third day in which Spanish journalists travelling to the country will have the opportunity to visit the main Namibian media to exchange impressions with their directors and top managers.  The journalists who follow this training will also receive our manual, created with the contributions of the Nairobi course, and a certificate. The idea is to keep in touch, helping to improve, each one from their own territory and their own media, but forming part of a transnational network, the quality of the information that reaches our public opinion. 

This course is an initiative of Casa África's Media Department, which would be impossible to carry out without the decisive collaboration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation and, especially, of the Spanish embassies on African soil.