In the midst of the pandemic, women have found new opportunities online, writes Mercy Mangwana The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the uptake of digital tools and services and scaled up the global transition towards a digital economy. The Economist reckons that the usage of mobile internet grew faster in the first quarter of 2020, as citizens, governments and…
When the 11th Ugandan Parliament is sworn in next month, it will have more women than the previous one, maintaining the country’s above-average rank in gender equity in politics. While currently ranked at number 37 out of 193 countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s list, this above-average performance belies the stagnation that has choked the move…
Three years ago, three university students were at the cusp of their journalism careers, looking forward to starting their journeys in newsrooms in Zimbabwe. However, they met with unforeseen roadblocks. Nicole Kurebwasweka couldn’t get placement for the industrial attachment unit of her journalism course at the University of Zimbabwe. The production department of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation turned her down, saying they…
On a “normal” day in Farah-Salam, you might find journalists from Europe-based media clicking away at their cameras capturing images of residents in Casablanca’s migrant suburbs documenting the European migrant crisis. 2020 was anything but normal for the residents of Farah-Salam, one such suburb, and the photojournalists who cover them. Six years ago, there were…
Sexual harassment is media’s open secret, and journalism in Cameroon is losing many promising reporters who leave the newsroom to run away from it.
When Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni and his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) designed their manifesto for the January 2021 elections, issues affecting women were given little attention. Given that NRM has control over parliament, with more than 63 per cent of legislators, one would be forgiven for assuming that for the next five years, the…
“Journalism is not a crime” is often the rallying call against the injustice of the persecution of reporters the world over. But crime journalists can’t ply their trade without getting into the thick of crime, metaphorically speaking. This, however, is often used to perpetuate biases that keep women out of the crime desk. A cursory…
Nelly Ating has been documenting the plight of child victims of Boko Haram, in the norther part of Nigeria. Ating, a photojournalist, focuses on the trauma inflicted on the children by the militia. While telling the stories of children caught up in the crosshairs of conflict is Ating’s driving force, she told AWiM News that…
Culton Scovia Nakamya, a reporter at BBS Television in Uganda, was the only female journalist on Robert “Bobi Wine” Kyagulanyi’s campaign trail. On Wednesday, December 30, 2020, she joined Kyagulanyi, the main opposition candidate for the January 2021 election, who was heading to Kalangala, a tourist district that is part of the popular Ssese Islands. Nakamya was looking forward to visiting the island for…
When Hana Saada, a doctoral female student at the University of Algiers Benyoucef Benkhedda, looks at the news, she barely sees women in science on the pages of the newspaper or on screen. There’s barely a sound of them on radio too. One would be think that there are few or no women in science. The former…
Janet Otieno was editing the final page of a magazine for the Citizen, a Tanzanian newspaper, when she received a call from human resources. It was 5pm in April 2020, about a month after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Tanzania. Janet, the acting managing editor and features editor at Mwananchi Communications in Tanzania, stopped mid-sentence…
When Nigerian journalist Angela Ulunma Agoawike was conducting research for her university project in the late 1980s, she had difficulties finding the information on women in politics. “I visited two university libraries – Nsuka and Port Harcourt – but there was not much literature on women like Margaret Ekpo, a frontline politician in her time. Despite the involvement of women in…
