IWMF Pledges to Monitor Women in Agriculture Reporting

Sylvia Mweetwa

25 May 2011

Kampala — The International Women Media Foundation (IWMF) has pledged to continue evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of reporting women in agriculture even as the training comes to an end.

IWMF, which for three years has been conducting training of reporters from the Times of Zambia and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, has further urged the trainees to continue with the hard work of highlighting success stories of women in agriculture.

IWMF training coordinator Alana Barton was speaking during the official opening of the IWMF leaders’ forum being held at Speke Resort, which is also being attended by journalists from Mali and Uganda who have been undergoing training on reporting women in agriculture

Ms Barton said IWMF would continue to conduct follow-up media monitoring at the centres of excellence (CoEs), the media institutions which underwent the training in an effort to assess the current level of agriculture reporting and compare the average from the sowing seeds study.

“As IWMF we will continue to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness. We will conduct follow-up media monitoring at the CoEs to assess the current level of agricultural reporting and compare the averages from the sowing the seeds study,”she said.

She said the organisation would also work towards determining whether the quality of their reporting had improved based on the programme’s criteria.

Science Foundation for Livelihood and Development chief executive, Arthur Makara said the media should attempt to analyse the increased food prices and transport costs in their respective countries to ordinary people as a way of making the public make informed decisions.

AllAfrica – All the Time