By Happy Mulolani
As climate change continues to ravage many communities globally, different countries are striving for innovative solutions to contribute to the devastating effects.
South Africa is one of the of the Sub-Sahara African countries making significant gains in coming up with a Powertracker to provide panacea to the devastating effects of climate change in communities.
Speaking in an interview in Berlin, Germany on the sidelines of a conference on Climate and Environmental reporting held on this year’s World Press Freedom day, organised by the Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT), Associate Journalist Andiswa Matikinca from Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Journalism in South Africa, explains that the PowerTracker is a tool that was developed to track among others, renewable power projects and the decommissioning of coal plants in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Oxpeckers is a non-profit company whose aim is to improve the quality and impact of environmental journalism in Africa and other parts of the globe, and provides a platform, for investigative journalists interested in highlighting environmental issues,” Ms Matikinca affirms.
The tool is also utilised to unpack complex climate stories through using dynamic infographics single story animated maps and data visualisation to augment more traditional story packages.
“Oxpeckers uses best-of-breed mapping visualisations and geo-data analysis to track and expose the criminal syndicates, corrupt officials and greedy corporations that are looting Africa’s natural resources across international borders,” Ms Matikinca reiterated.
Ideally, Oxpeckers is making strides through developing the most comprehensive database of eco-offences in Africa. The resulting reportage is published online and also makes use of media partners, “with the underlying evidence and other source materials available to other media and environmental guardians for use in their own work,” she says.
Ms Matikinca states that Oxpeckers work with a network of journalists based around the globe whose niche is environmental reporting. The unit offers Oxpeckers associates secondment from other media outlets in Africa, Asia and Europe to spend up to three-months fellowship with the centre utilising its resources and tools to investigate major environmental stories for their home audiences and home media.
Kenya’s Nation Media Group, Managing Editor Bernard Mwinzi explains that the tool is useful for journalists to make use of to unpack complex climate stories.
“I’m glad that the Powertracker tool is an initiative which will help journalists in Africa build the African climate narrative, as they are various issues that need to be teased out and highlighted in a timely manner,” Mr Mwinzi said.
Zambia is one of the countries contributing to Oxpeckers reportage. Recently, some of the country’s journalists added their voices to the environmental and public health problems caused by lead mining for 30years, as the country now faces growing manganese demand for electric batteries. This is against the background of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022 for the development of a regional value chain in the electric vehicle battery sector, as minerals were needed to power global energy transition.
The MOU aimed to facilitate the development of an integrated value chain for the production of electric vehicle batteries in the DRC and Zambia, which included raw material extraction, processing, manufacturing and assembly.
This MoU challenged the dominance of China, South Africa, Hong Kong, Mauritius and lndia as traditional consumers of Zambian copper, gold, lithium, cobalt and manganese exports. Its target was large volumes of critical transition metals that occur in Katanga Copperbelt, a mineral-rich strip stretching from Lualaba province in the south-eastern DRC to the Luapula province in northern Zambia.
Raising awareness on this environmental problem positions the country differently, as it is likely to help policymakers implement informed decisions and also offer amicable solutions to the communities grappling with the high demand for manganese.
The beauty of this tool is that it makes use of hosting geo-narrative platforms that use cutting-edge mapping techniques and forensic data tools to improve reportage.
Therefore, this tool requires to be adopted by many countries to share investigative resources, source documents, as well as specialist tools and skills through Oxpeckers manuals and workshops. This also avoids the limitation of publishing exclusive environmental investigations, in both legacy and new media coupled with ebooks and other avenues.
The Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Journalism is Africa’s first journalistic investigation unit which focuses on tackling environmental issues. The centre combines traditional investigative reporting coupled with data analysis and geo-mapping tools to expose eco-offences and track organised criminal syndicates.