Barclays hosts Absa Highway Africa journalism masterclass

EDITORS and Senior Journalists in the country have been advised to start investing more in data journalism which will pave the way for them to improve their writing skills and produce stories of its kind which will foster social and economic development of the country.

This was said by the Barclays Bank Tanzania, Managing Director, Abdi Mohammed when closing a two days training to editors and senior journalists in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday that in the process of rebranding the bank is vital to work shoulder to shoulder with media as strong partner.

He noted that the bank is the climax of making necessary changes to cope with changing business environment “as your all aware that in the couple of years the bank made a lot changes in the technologies, staff and do away with old traditional culture of operating in the financial sector,” he added.

Mohammed added that Barclays Africa changed its name back to Absa Group Limited recently and will rename its Barclays Bank subsidiaries in Tanzania and some other African countries within the next two years subject to approvals.  

“the courses focuses on teaching journalists that there is another way of reporting instead of holding the tape recorder and interviewing sources in the common way of reporting,” says Peter Verweij, Media Consultant on Data Journalism.

The two days training was organized by Barclays bank Tanzania in Dar es Salaam about 20 Editors and Senior Journalists attended the training from different media outlets across the country with the aim of empowering media practitioners to do away with traditional way of reporting stories.

He noted that the training was focusing on empowering journalists to understand and evaluate number in life expectancy, trading, pricing and the level of poverty and GDPs and the best way to handle them in the substantial manner to readers.

“I will fill the cap, the training has actually empowering me in terms of writing and covering data stories and am now capable to handle any story related to data,” says Henry Lyimo, Business Editor, Daily News

Lyimo added that the training will assist editors and reporters to do away with the traditional way of reporting stories by visualizing their information and make it more reliable to their viewers and readers across the country.

“this training will help us to skip and completely abandoned the common writing of stories such as he said, he added or he underscore it gives a journalists power by giving stories in terms of numbers and statistics which will add value to the public,” he noted.

 Dr Verweij underscored that journalists were fully equipped with materials that will help them to understand the course which in turn will help them to handle stories related to statistics, numbers and graphics items that used to confuse journalist during covering stories and public events.

Barclays Bank Tanzania is part of Absa Group Limited, an African financial services group that aims to be the pride of the continent. Absa Group Limited is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa and is one of Africa’s largest diversified financial services groups with a presence in 12 countries across the continent and around 42,000 employees.