The scientists and practitioners had initially gathered at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates for a one-day symposium, called “African Environmental Communication" in the Spring Semester of 2023.

The findings of their research and the symposium recommendations, relayed recently, voice dissatisfaction with the news coverage of environment issues in Arica, urging mainstream media and news agencies in the continent to adopt better strategies and prioritize inclusive coverage.

Hosted by Sharjah University's College of Communication, the symposium was attended by scientists and practitioners from South Africa, Ghana, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zimbabwe, Malysia, Malawi, Nigeria, and a host of other countries. It is the first ever symposium brought together to discuss coverage of environmental issues in Africa by an academic institution in the UAE.

The event's organizer, Dr. Ogadimma Emenyeonu, says the symposium “x-rayed environmental issues in Africa" to how best to report them. He adds: “Given that environmental issues have become prominent and monumental in Africa, it becomes necessary for African journalism to respond to the rising environmental issues by providing innovative ways to cover and report the environment, especially in this digital age."

“The symposium sought to update knowledge of environmental journalism in Africa, provide an opportunity to deliberate some conceptual developments in African environmental communication, and encourage journalists to rise to the challenge of reporting the environment adequately and appropriately."

The symposium's recommendations highlight the participants' research findings which mostly focus on how mainstream media cover environment in African countries and the journalism practices, ethos, and ideologies they pursue in selecting their stories.

Julian Matthews, lecturer at the University of Leicester says researchers examining coverage of environmental issues in the continent currently “share a big frustration on how media coverage is avoiding seriousness and immediacy of climate change."

Lecturer Matthews' research, and the keynote speech he delivered at the symposium, demonstrate how digitization is impacting journalism as practice with advertising royalties, the financial mainstay of mainstream media, migrating to Internet companies.

In the meantime, he shows how news values that have traditionally helped newspapers select stories and make the headlines are changing, with blogs and social media setting the agenda nowadays.

The digital revolution is likewise transforming the concept of gatekeepers who have traditionally believed to be newspaper owners, senior editors, or senior journalists, he adds.

The recommendations and the participants' research reveal that Western news agencies such as Reuters, Bloomberg and the Associated Press are almost the sole source of news on environmental issues in the continent while local African context of reporting the stories is sorely missing.

In today's world, anyone with access to modern digital gadgets can be a source of information for the media, from a lorry driver to a professor in journalism. However, the scientists say, Africa's news landscape has developed journalistic practices which hinder rather than facilitate coverage of environment crises in the continent.

For instance, the symposium participants cite multilingualism, which they find an obstacle constraining effor​ts to shed light on voices so far left out of news coverage and the reporting of environment issues as they happen.

Binyam Sisay Mendusu, Associate Professor at The Africa Institute, says multilingualism in Africa presents an inherent problem in communication and journalism strategies.

“Languages are a societal memory bank" and a communication system that is worth considering by practitioners across the continent, associate Professor Mendusu notes, adding that “government officials in Africa believe managing multilingualism to be problematic and costly."

Africa is home to nearly one-third of the world's languages. Harvard University's African Language Program estimates the continent to have anywhere between 1000 and 2000 languages.

The diversity of Africa's languages has prompted African news organizations and the mainstream media to follow “Europhonic legacies of colonialism", according to Associate Professor Mendusu.

A situation like this exacerbates the gap between consumers and producers of knowledge, he notes, with the elite preferring complex news stories in European languages and the mainstream left in the dark about environment events in their backyard. Blose Maud, Senior Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, says news organizations in Africa are more focused on elite languages. American or Western social issues and events are more likely to be reported than problems with the environment, he adds.

There has been a call for the adoption of journalistic practices drawing on local African cultures to increase awareness of environment issues in the continent.

There has been a call for the adoption of journalistic practices drawing on local African cultures to increase awareness of environment issues in the continent.

Akwasi Bosompem Boateng, Postdoctoral Fellow at South Africa's North-West University, urges the introduction of indigenous communication strategies such as folklore, folk music, and theatre performances in communicating environment issues to the public.

“Indigenous media are useful in addressing information deficit about environmental challenges like climate change because of their capacity to address issues in unique ways and languages that resonate with the culture and traditions of people of Ghana," Boateng explains.

Mwaona Nyirongo, Lecturer at Mzuzu University, refers to the case of journalists in Malawi whom he says employ a “hierarchy of truth" when reporting on climate change.

Malawi reporters, he adds, mostly lean on Western journalistic practices, overlooking the benefits local communities' cultures can provide to enhance reporting of environment issues.

Lecturer Nyirongo goes on to say that Malawi journalists lean on government officials as sources for their environment-related stories, while local and indigenous perspectives are excluded.

Presenting her findings of a study she conducted on the news coverage of Kwazulu-Natal floods in South Africa, Maud mentions how her research has found that the news reports about the floods used as data for her analysis are mostly in English even though the language commonly used in the region of Durban is Zulu.

Her other findings are more shocking as she reveals that news publications in Africa usually pay lip-service to environment and climate change, and that the aim of those covering such events is merely to inform and not educate.

Thandi Bombi, Doctor of Philosophy candidate at Rhodes University, says mainstream news organizations in South Africa “piggyback" on the same story with the same sources, denying their readers the chance to glean information from more than one source and depriving them of environmental news content with a local touch.​