Media Engagement

The Nile Media Awards were introduced to promote increased, factual and balanced reporting on Nile cooperation and Nile Basin issues. Journalists are encouraged to submit entries covering topics such as countries jointly addressing challenges like climate change, maximising socio-economic benefits, minimising risks and costs of development projects, and promoting regional peace and security through the cooperative management and use of the shared Nile Basin water resources. We encourage journalists to explore the benefits of cooperation in the Nile Basin on various topics/sectors, including food, water and energy security, climate adaptation, ecosystems, governance and management of water resources, regional investment projects and many more. The next Nile Media Awards will take place in 2023. 

These workshops are organised to equip journalists with skills on how to report about the technical content around NBI’s thematic areas as well as provide them with platforms from which they can access news about the NBI. Consideration for participants in these workshops is to have fair representation from all the 10 NBI Member States with at least two journalists from each country and the host country benefitting in terms of having more participants present.

Breakfast meetings with editors are organised ahead of the big gatherings such as Nile Day or Nile Basin Development Forum. Participants are invited from all the major media houses in the host country, who are then briefed about the event that’s going to take place, it’s significance and how NBI and the media can partner to provide maximum visibility for the event. This involvement with the media houses also enables the editor identify the most suitable journalist to cover the event. If you are an editor and are interested in joining the team when NBI is in your country, please send your contact details, including media house, to mediarelations@nilebasin.org

Press briefings take place after the editors’ meetings to brief the journalists about the details of the event that’s to take place one or two days later. This enables them report and create awareness ahead of the event before they can be invited to attend the event itself and write about it thereafter. If you are a journalist and are interested in additional information about the Nile Basin Initiative, please send an email to mediarelations@nilebasin.org

NBI has organised two field trips so far, which have been embedded in the Nile Media Training Workshops. The purpose of these field trips is to show journalists physical evidence of the projects NBI is implementing in the region and how they will benefit the communities living around them. The first field trip was during a workshop in Kigali, Rwanda to the 80MW Rusumo Falls Hydroelectric Project implemented by NELSAP-CU to benefit Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania. There have also been media field trips to Ethiopia’s Lake Tana, Sudan’s Senna Dam and another to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which was organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

Since 2017, the collaborative journalism capacity-building and publishing project The Niles covers transboundary water cooperation in the Nile Basin. The close-knit network of over 40 journalists from all ten Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) member countries serves as a living example of how different groups and nationalities can work together successfully and form strong bonds based on mutual trust, shared identity and destiny: the River Nile.

Around the Nile, there is much mistrust and rivalry. The Niles strives to be an example of how things can be approached differently – with openness, alliance and even-handedness. What is needed most are opportunities to practice collaboration and cooperation. These will not come on their own. They must be created.

And that is what The Niles is all about: a physical example of what transboundary cooperation looks like, through which journalists from Nile Basin countries team up to produce bi-annual print and online magazines that take a look at transboundary water, environment, development and food security challenges while following a conflict-sensitive reporting approach. The Niles journalists’ continuous efforts to inform the public and build bridges amongst the diverse Nile audiences have earned the publication a unique reputation for its brand and balanced approach to reporting complex Nile Basin realities.

Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT) produces the publication in collaboration with the NBI and with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, commissioned by the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).