Deadline: 20-Aug-2025
Are you a Nigerian journalist passionate about making complex climate issues accessible and relevant to your community? One World Media, in partnership with Surge Africa, is thrilled to launch a new opportunity as part of The Climate Reporting Gap Initiative.
Across Nigeria, the impacts of climate change are increasingly visible — from rising heat and water scarcity to the complexities of the energy transition. Yet, local stories that connect these challenges to people’s daily lives often remain underreported. That’s where the Climate Reporting Gap Fellowship comes in.
This new initiative will support six Nigerian journalists to report original stories on climate finance and energy transition through inclusive, data-driven and community-centred reporting. Whether you’re drawn to print, audio, video, or multimedia reporting, this Fellowship is designed to enable you to produce compelling, solutions-focused journalism that resonates at the local and regional level.
They’re looking for stories on climate change and energy transition in Nigeria, and in the region. This includes stories on transition minerals, mining of these minerals, energy access and diplomacy, covered with a sense of accountability, credibility, and urgency. Stories can examine the economic landscape from the lens of phasing out of fossil fuels, governance of transition minerals, decentralizing energy systems, eradicating energy, poverty, and building structures to enable transition to take root.
Aims
- The Fellowship aims to develop knowledge and skills of journalists in how they report and convey stories of climate change and the politics of energy transition.
Goals
- Reality On Ground: For oil producing nations like Nigeria, the majority of the population cannot fathom a thriving economy without oil; they seek to change this perception.
- Data Driven Reporting: They’re looking for reporting that uses data as evidence to build arguments, and utilises climate science and case-studies, including real life experiences across Nigeria and beyond.
- Coverage on Challenges and Solutions: They want to see journalism that center local struggles at the heart of climate news and media.
- Political Accountability: They want to see real actions being taken by the government at all levels, to ensure that policy documents translate into meaningful actions.
Benefits
- Up to £5k funding for their reporting
- One-to-one mentoring
- In-depth training, in person and online
- Industry workshops, including safety, impact, and pitching
- Training trip to Colombia, South America
- Global promotion of all media pieces by project partners
- Membership of the OWM global alumni network
Why this Fellowship?
- These are the principles behind this initiative:
- Uncover the Politics of Energy Transition: The Fellowship will prioritise stories on energy transition.
- Unpack Diplomacy of Transition Finance: There’s been many instances in recent years where diplomacy has played a key role in enabling access to large scale climate finance.
- Localizing Climate Data: While climate data and information is largely available on local and international platforms, tailored content that targets specific audiences (such as those affected by climate change) in a compelling manner, is still lacking.
- Expanding Research on Transition Narratives: A just societal transformation can only occur only when all stakeholders’ voices are heard, and the changes are understood and discussed by diverse groups, including local and vulnerable communities that are often sidelined in public debates and decision-making processes.
- Position Local Voices from a Place of Power: They’re interested to hear what the people can offer in a time of social, economic and political turmoil, and how active citizen participation can ground locally-derived solutions while they move to new energy systems.
Eligibility Criteria
- Journalists and filmmakers from Nigeria, and reporting in Nigeria.
- They’re looking for mid-career and experienced applicants, with at least 3-5 years-experience in their field.
- Applicants don’t need to have a background in climate finance, but an interest in telling stories about the climate crisis and energy transitions, and a strong background in journalism and/or their chosen medium.
- They’re particularly keen to hear creative proposals that cover an underreported story, or hear from people who are often unheard and offer unexpected or rare access.
For more information, visit OWM.
