Nairobi, Kenya: Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) is among six media institutions selected to implement the first-ever Africa Climate Beacons Newsroom Initiative, coordinated by the Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA).

To launch the initiative, MESHA has brought together senior representatives from five of the six English-speaking African countries in Nairobi for a two-day meeting running from today, Sept 29, to Wednesday, Sept 30.

The Climate Solutions Beacon Newsrooms Initiative seeks to strengthen reporting of climate solutions to the continent’s climate challlenges and action.

At the Nairobi meeting, the newsrooms will strengthen their plans for climate stories, audience engagement, impact and newsroom transformation as part of the project.

The newsrooms include Radio Africa Group – Kenya; Water Journalists Africa – Uganda; Media Challenge Initiative – Uganda; Social Voices – Nigeria; Habitat Media – Tanzania; and Zodiak Broadcasting Station – Malawi.

George Kalungwe, MESHA project lead at Zodiak, said the station has planned to cover six stories focusing, among others, on climate change mitigation, community resilience, and science and innovation.

"Our focus is on community-led and people-centred stories. We want people to tell their own stories about what they are doing to mitigate the impacts of climate change," he said in his presentation.

The initiative seeks to strengthen the capacity of newsrooms to report not only on the challenges posed by climate change but also on efforts to address them, said Aghan Daniel, MESHA CEO, as quoted from the group's website.

"We want to, collectively with newsrooms, strengthen their capacity to move away from reporting mainly challenges posed by climate change to efforts to address them.

"The newsrooms will discuss how to make the case for climate solutions journalism, address skepticism and identify climate change issues that should receive greater attention in 2026 and 2027," said Aghan Daniel, MESHA CEO.

(Additional information from MESHA: https://meshascience.org/senior-media-leads-at-meshas-climate-solutions-inception-meeting-in-nairobi/)