The African Centre for Media Excellence has developed a programme with the Revenue Watch Institute and the Thomson Reuters Foundation to teach journalists how to report effectively on oil and gas, an industry that could bring huge benefits to Uganda if managed properly.

Revenue Watch monitors public finances, advises governments on policy choices and campaigns against corruption in mining and the oil and gas industry. The training programme is its first that directly targets journalists, and their role in promoting public debate on the sector.

Six Ugandan journalists travelled to Ghana in January 2011 and attended a training workshop, or Course A, that launched the programme. That workshop offered Ghanaian and Ugandan journalists insights into the industry, and opportunities for first-hand reporting in a country that had just begun oil production.

ACME brought the six back together on May 7, 2011 at its training centre in Kampala for a second workshop – Course B – with the focus on Uganda. This workshop was an opportunity to investigate aspects of the industry that will have a direct impact on the lives of ordinary Ugandans.

The six participants, who include television, radio and print journalists, are producing stories as part of the programme. They are the first of a series of journalists that ACME will train over three years as part of the Revenue Watch programme.

This is a unique training programme in the sense that participants are not left to their own devices after a few days of training. Here we team the participants up with mentors for continuous engagement over several months. The mentors do comment – via telephone, face-to-face and online interaction – on the stories after they have run, with a view to making later reporting better. The participants can also apply for reporting grants.

The current programme is a pilot and runs until the end of 2012. If successful, it could be expanded to other countries.