Journalist training in Cameroon

To help journalists in Cameroon gain a better understanding of the country’s palm oil value chain, OPAL’s Cameroon team organized a two-day training workshop in Douala, Cameroon in September 2018, where journalists played the CoPalCam game. By increasing their understanding, this workshop aimed for journalists to be able to write articles of better quality on the topic and have more impact on the different actors.

“Playing the game […] was like a revelation because you could see every-thing […]. It is very difficult to educate somebody using PowerPoint or by just feeding him with knowledge, but if you allow this person to play the game like we did, you see immediately why certain things happen, what can be done about it, and this is very interesting. […] I now better understand the system.” said Evambe Thompson Atra, Journalist at Bonakanda Rural Radio during the TV talk show “Planet rise” on palm oil that followed the event. (Canal 2 English, link below)

The session brought together journalists from local (Bonakanda Rural Ra-dio, Radio Beach FM, Nkulu Makeli community radio), national (Cameroon Radio and Television, Canal 2 English, The Post, La Nouvelle Expression, Mutations, Le Massager, Vision 4, Camer.be, Cameroon Busi-ness Today (SOPECAM), regional (Jeune Afrique) and international media houses (Reuters, BBC World, The Wall Street Journal).

Many of them reported the experience in their own media:
Videos:            TV Talk show by Canal 2 English (length: 27:34 minutes)
Reportage by Vision 4 (length: 1:59 minutes)
Newspaper:   6 articles in local press (The Post, Le Messager, Quotidien Mutations, Cameroon Business)

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