Reflections from the Hands-On Workshop on Curating Impact Stories
In January 2026, Surge Africa hosted six Nigerian journalists in the city of Abuja, Nigeria. This was the Hands-on Workshop On Curating Impact Stories of the Climate Reporting Gap Fellowship, a collaboration between Surge Africa and One World Media. The fellowship emerged from a shared frustration: Nigerian newspapers reproducing international press releases as local reporting, climate stories recycled with only one sentence changed across multiple publications, a media culture that mistakes formality for investigation.
Over two days, the six fellows - Amir Sadiq, Ini Ekott, Vivian Chime, Adesewa Olofinko, Lami Sadiq, and Manasseh Mbachii - worked alongside facilitators Isaac Botti (Program Coordinator, Climate and Emergencies at Social Action Nigeria) , Khadija Kareem (Head Policy Research Communications at Dataphyte), Titilope Fadare (Multimedia Journalist), Bukola Adebayo (Investigative Journalist at Thomson Reuters Foundation/Context News), and Oghosa Egbenho (Visual Storyteller). They underwent a shift in how they understand climate journalism itself.
The Numbers That Do Not Add Up
Isaac Botti opened the workshop with a session that laid out troubling contradictions in Nigeria's energy policy. On one hand, the government has committed to an energy transition that requires $1.9 trillion. On the other hand, Nigeria's budget still depends on oil for 50% of its revenue. Between 40 and 55% of the population has no access to the national electricity grid. Cooking fuel alone accounts for 31% of the country's emissions. And while the government promises to cut emissions by up to 35% by 2030, it recently approved $18.2 billion in new fossil fuel projects.
Botti said these contradictions are not policy failures - they are policy designed to serve international interests rather than local needs. Journalists must stop asking if Nigeria will transition and start asking: Who benefits, who is excluded, who pays, and why are promises to donors binding but promises to citizens optional?
Every fellow said their biggest problem was getting data, Khadija Kareem in the second session of the day, showed that Nigeria has plenty of climate data, it is just scattered across ministry websites, donor reports, and academic papers. Scattered data is hard to question, and this is not an accident.
She trained fellows to work with four data types: environmental, socio-economic, policy-financial, and behavioural. She taught them to ask: Why is this data scattered? Who benefits from it being hard to find? What do averages hide? These critical questions will help them pursue where the real data lies.
From Policy Documentation to Accountability
The six project pitches by the fellows revealed that these are not separate investigations. These were not six stories, they were entry points into the same political economy.
Amir is probing power sector dysfunction and energy poverty. Ini is tracking climate finance to see if communities benefit. Vivian is examining Nigeria's solar manufacturing capacity against Chinese imports. Adesewa is documenting lithium mining's social and environmental costs. Lami is tracing how foreign demand drives charcoal deforestation. Manasseh is investigating why smallholder farmers are excluded from transition planning.
Energy theft, missing loans, failed manufacturing, mining destruction, deforestation, and exclusion are not separate issues. They are signs of the same broken system.
By the end of Day One, fellows stopped asking "What is the government doing?" and started asking: Who benefits? What data is missing and who profits? Which communities are omitted? How do international frameworks limit our options?
The Craft of Impactful Storytelling
Day Two pivoted from the what and why to the how. Titilope Fadare demonstrated that meaningful production does not require expensive equipment. A smartphone, a tripod, a lavalier microphone, and free software are sufficient to produce stories that move audiences.
Bukola Adebayo and Oghosa Egbenho shared behind-the-scenes insights from their respective documentaries: The Unexpected Rise of Solar Power and Yellow Sunset respectively. Oghosa explained that 90% of animation work happens in pre-production, and that clear contracts and staged payments protect everyone involved. Bukola revealed that she entered the field expecting to report on a female workforce majority in solar manufacturing, only to discover women made up approximately 35% of the sector. She did not discard the gender angle. She refined it. The documentary ended up being about how company messaging didn't match who they actually hired. This was a more important story than the one she had planned to tell.
Rethinking Impact
Two tensions emerged during the workshop.
The Audience: Fellows wanted to reach large audiences, but their policy-heavy stories are unlikely to go viral. Facilitators reframed impact: a documentary watched by 50 policymakers can create more change than one watched by 50,000 casual viewers. A database used by three journalists over five years can have more impact than a single article with high readership. We did not resolve this tension, but we agreed traditional metrics like views are not enough. New ways of measuring success are needed.
Neutrality: If climate finance functions as debt diplomacy and policies come with conditions that limit sovereignty, can journalists remain neutral? The group concluded that neutrality is a luxury for those not directly affected. Nigerian journalists report on a crisis their country did not create but disproportionately suffers from. Pretending that polluters and victims, lenders and borrowers have equal standing is not objectivity. This does not mean abandoning facts. It means refusing to treat unequal power as equal.
What This Means for Nigerian Climate Journalism
The fellowship revealed four gaps.
Nigerian journalism education does not adequately prepare reporters for the political economy analysis required to meaningfully capture climate finance and energy transition.
Nigeria lacks accessible climate data, forcing reporters to do unsustainable legwork.
Journalists need grants, equipment, and technical help to turn investigations into visual stories.
We must move beyond views and likes to measure policy change and long-term accountability.
What’s Next?
The six fellows left Abuja with refined project plans, production timelines, and access to a peer network for ongoing consultation. They are now building documentaries, databases, and investigative features that will hold power to account.
Surge Africa and our partners are developing shared digital infrastructure to support their data needs and house completed projects as publicly accessible resources. We are in conversation about scale, regional expansion, and institutional partnership.But the biggest change is harder to measure. These six journalists no longer see their job as simply writing down what the government announces. They now see themselves as watchdogs who hold power to account. They ask tougher questions. They understand that when data is hidden, that hiding is itself a story worth telling. They can tell which voices actually matter and which are just for show. They know that a story's real impact is not measured in views or likes.
The Climate Reporting Gap Fellowship is an initiative of Surge Africa, implemented in partnership with One World Media, Mutante, and the University of Birmingham. The 2025/26 cohort comprises six Nigerian journalists investigating the politics of oil, energy transition, and climate justice.