(Business in Cameroon) - On May 10, 2018, in partnership with the local branches of Code for Africa and the World Bank, Ecofin Agency launched a training session on economic and financial news writing in Cameroon. The session which will be concluded in December 2018 will equip over twenty journalists with the basic skills in those sectors. 

Odilia Hegba, communication manager of World Bank’s regional representation, is proud to partner with Ecofin Agency which is well known as an economic and financial news agency, and Code for Africa because such initiative falls in line with the representation’s will to reinforce the knowledge of journalists in francophone Africa.  “One of our missions is to train data journalists for quality investigation through data collection and analysis in order to present the findings in a digestive format to readers. Our ultimate goal is to improve governance and citizen’s ownership and involvement in public affairs. We believe that thanks to this partnership with World Bank and Ecofin Agency, the training will be a useful contribution in the quality of journalistic investigation as far as economic news is concerned in Cameroon”, says Charlie Martial Ngounou, supervisor of the Code for Cameroon movement which is an initiative of the Yaoundé based NGO AfroLeadership. 

Ecofin Agency on its part informs that this programme is in line with the reasons why it launched its activities 6 years ago. “As for me, it was obvious that African journalists were the most able to understand and explain the African economic and financial news. They only need to be offered the opportunity to apply international standards to their skills to give the best of their talents. We are proud to participate in that program with World Bank and Code for Cameroon and we promise to support the programme and facilitate the emergence of talented economic and financial journalists in Cameroon”, Dominique Flaux, director of publication at Ecofin Agency, said.  The participants (both professional journalists and students in journalism at the Institute of Information Technology) will be trained for two days and coached for three months. After that, they will be offered another round of training and coaching.