The Global Warming Times

If selected as a winner, i will use the prize funding and support help my organization (The Global Warming Times) which is a new outfit fully owned by Africans) to transform from print to online-only e-newspaper and get to train -in Movement Journalism- environmental activists from all the sub-Saharan countries, with a view of recruiting them as content contributors to the newspaper to inform and frame the urgent debate of climate injustice while fostering green growth.

That projected milestone will help us scale from Kenya to cover the 'collateral-damage' issue of climate injustice that affects  the large majority of the about 1.1 Billion Sub-Saharan Africans Population.

The funding will go along way in ensuring that we don't allow unintended consequences to hurt the world’s poor. Any restrictions developed by the US must ensure sufficient latitude to support extremely diverse countries to meet their climate and development goals. This includes targeted flexibility for natural gas: to help energy-poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa bring people out of poverty; crowd in even more renewables; and transition away from dirtier fuels. Blanket financing bans in energy-poor countries make no sense for global mitigation efforts and will undercut climate justice for majority of sub-Saharan Africans.

As the first-born and first University graduate in my family, I knew too well the responsibility and expectations that were placed on me.  Culturally in eastern Kenya, a first-born is like a ‘mini-parent’. I remember vividly in the 90’s during my primary schooling, my father, a freelance journalist, would be away from home for weeks. When, my mother left for the market on Saturdays to sell sweet potatoes, I would be left in charge of my seven younger siblings. My duties entailed fetching water from a nearby river (now totally dry, thanks to climate change) to cook for and wash my sibling as well as store some.  

Fast-forward, I would later join the University of Nairobi, graduating with a bachelors and later master’s degrees in earth sciences as well as a postgraduate diploma in science communication and journalism. I joined the UNFCCC’s  first carbon capture and sequestration working group (CCS-WG) within its Clean Development Mechanism in 2012.The foregoing coupled with my current doctoral training (part-time) in climate change science , tech and governance helped me realize that the real climate crisis in Africa is about adaptation hence launched The Global Warming Times in 2018 to bridge the reporting gap.

The real climate crisis in Africa is about adaptation. More than 1 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa are among the most vulnerable worldwide to climate impacts, and they urgently require more energy to adapt to those impacts, not less. The world’s energy-poor need every tool available to survive what’s coming, including a diverse array of technologies to power energy-intensive solutions like desalination, cold storage, air conditioning, and to produce steel and concrete for resilient infrastructure. Rich countries will generally be able to adapt to climate impacts. Few Africans will have that chance without significantly increased energy supply.  

Sub-Saharan Africa communities are often talked about in the western media but apparently, they’re rarely heard from. Our new organization-The Global Warming Times- is a fully African owned new newspaper based in movement journalism, 100% dedicated to matters climate change to inform and frame the urgent debate of climate injustice while fostering green growth.  

It is best placed to provide a much-needed platform to amplify the ideas and voices of the affected Africans. It is circulated monthly in print (using recycled paper) in Nairobi and the immediate plan is to transform it into a weekly –then daily–online e-newspaper- covering sub-Saharan Africa.

The West’s approach to climate prioritizes emissions mitigation and energy austerity, which is exactly the opposite of an adaptation-first energy-abundance strategy that vulnerable African nations need.

There are existing three mainstream dailies in Kenya that have been circulating in the Nairobi city news vendors stands/stalls for the last 50 years. They are based in traditional journalism covering various issue from politics to entertainment and matters lifestyle to of course emerging breaking news of all sorts.

We are unique in that are the only print media organization dedicated 100% to the currently biting Climate Crisis and applying purely movement journalism approach to our reporting. This entails basically giving the lion’s share of our newsprint space to the victims of climate change challenges and air pollution. We put the offended communities first and this approach is particularly popular in Kenya where large swaths of the populace is living below poverty level and frequently reeling from the shocks of one tragedy after another owing to their high vulnerability to almost every disaster that comes around.

Our work is entirely supported by grants and donations, unlike the existing mainstream newspaper organizations mentioned above, which are for-profit.

We champion the just causes of the voiceless and oppressed disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the already biting perils of a warming planet. Therefore, when we publish investigative pieces in Nairobi especially about greenhouse gases emitting point-sources and air pollutants’ offenders, our impact is measured by the corrective measures taken.  

For instance, our recent exposure of the real culprits of the toxic haze emissions within the western part of the Nairobi industrial area led to a peaceful protest/procession by the affected residents. This event apparently compelled the national environmental agency to take action and also informed a debate within the local county assembly to enact by-laws and review the relevant regulatory/legal frameworks to control the situation.  

Going forward, when we scale to cover the whole of the sub-Saharan Africa, success in this venture will be realized when we have over 200 environmental activists (sponsored and trained by us in movement journalism), majority from sub-Saharan Africa, who will double as our freelance correspondents. Our ideal outcome will also be achieved when cutting-edge technologies and world-class best practices, regarding the Climate Crisis, that our outfit will be aggressively featuring, begin to be applied on the ground besides changing related oppressive global policies.