The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has called on stakeholders within the Ghanaian media space to collaborate and help build the capacity of Ghanaian journalists in business and financial reporting.

According to the Minister, training of journalists in business and financial reporting is essential in equipping them with the needed skills and know-how to ensure accuracy in reporting financial issues.

He made the call when he addressed the graduation ceremony of 88 journalists at the Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa (BMIA) Financial Journalism Training program on Thursday, October 10, 2022, in Accra.

“As I have mentioned in times past, the media and journalism frontier require collaborations for impact. That is why we appreciate partnerships such as this one between Bloomberg, Strathmore Business School, the University of Ghana Business School and the Ghana Institute of Journalism to train more economic and financial journalists and welcome more of such partnerships.”

“Training such as this targeted at journalists is essential to ensure that the media industry and journalism deliver on their true purpose to our democracy. Which is to serve all stakeholders with equal access to the public space to participate in discourse that promotes our best values, our best aspirations and a thought-led good society,” he said.

He said the government on its part has put in motion a number of capacity-building programmes to assist journalists to meet the dynamics of the profession. One such programme he said is the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme (MCEP) which was rolled out in January this year.

So far, the programme has trained the first cohort of 60 journalists in ethical journalism and related modules with a further 190 set to also be trained in the coming months.

He admonished the graduates to as much as possible apply the knowledge acquired from the training programme in their line of duty and eschew false narratives and the publication of uninformed opinions instead of facts.

Present at the event were the Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, Rector of the Ghana Institute of Journalism, Prof. Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo, Provost of the College of Humanities, University of Ghana, Prof. Daniel Frimpong Ofori, Dean of the University of Ghana Business School, Prof. Justice Bawole, Dean of the Strathmore Business School, Dr. George Njenga, as well as representatives from Bloomberg.

On his part, Mr Fordjour underscored the important role journalists play in promoting transparency, accountability, and good governance. He said journalists over the years have become an important component of our governance system which is why it is incumbent on the graduates put to use the knowledge they have acquired from the training programme.

Prof. Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo was confident that the training program will go a long way to support the continuous progression of the Ghanaian media and help address the capacity challenges of journalists in the country.