Nwachukwu’s winning article explores how online job advertisements and social media platforms are misleading young people in Nigeria and Ghana, leading to exploitation and unsafe living conditions.
Henry Nwachukwu, a Nigerian journalist, has won the top prize in a writing competition focused on migration in Africa. His article, “Digital Traps: How Online Promises Are Hurting Migrants across the Nigeria–Ghana Corridor,” was selected as the best among the 26 submissions from a number of African journalists.
The competition was part of the COMMPASS project, a 3-year Erasmus+ initiative aimed at strengthening journalism training capacity and improving public discourse on migration and mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Nwachukwu’s winning article explores how online job advertisements and social media platforms are misleading young people in Nigeria and Ghana, leading to exploitation and unsafe living conditions.
UCU Hosts Final Phase of EU-Funded Project to Boost Migration Reporting in Africa
The story is grounded in the lived experiences of young migrants and supported by insights from experts and existing labour standards. It highlights how the lack of proper regulation, verification, and digital awareness creates room for abuse, especially for youths who are unemployed or seeking better opportunities across borders.
The article was praised for its grounded storytelling and insights from experts and existing labour standards. Nwachukwu, a final-year Mass Communication student at Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria, received a certificate at the five-day COMMPASS conference closure at Uganda Christian University (UCU) Mukono.
Nwachukwu was followed by Djakaridia Siribie from Burkina Faso and Collins Mtika from Malawi.
Awarding the certificates, to the winners or their representatives, Prof. Nyasulu noted that even the other writers who did not get awards are recognized as winners because he reasoned, their work also reflected components of the COMMPASS project objectives.
Africa’s Media Authorities Seal E-reporting Incorporation in African Migration
The third and final; international conference for consolidating online digital reporting on migration and mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa was closed UCU in Mukono on Thursday.
The 3-year Erasmus+ project code-named ‘Communicating Migration and Mobility, E-Learning Programmes and Newsroom Applications for Sub-Saharan Africa (COMMPASS), held under the theme: ‘Media, Migration And Mobility: Re-imagining the African Narrative’, is a component of the validation, recommendations and way forward, and is a climax of two earlier conferences in Kampala (Uganda) and Blantyre (Malawi way back in 2023.
The conference geared at laying a foundation for moving beyond stereotypes in migration reporting, exploring digital narratives, digital story telling on social change learning and competitive E-learning arrangement in which more than 100 researchers and teachers, and over 1,500 students, associated partners in higher education institutions, journalists and online courses have been trained over the period.
The COMMPASS project is calculated to strengthen journalism training capacity with a view to help improve the quality of information and public discourse on migration and mobility in countries of origin, transit and destination at a time when the African media industry is struggling to tell the African story of migration.
Participants in the five-day discourse co-funded by the European Union (EU) included journalism and media learners and lecturers from six universities in Malawi, Uganda and Burkina Faso, two universities in Germany and Portugal, eight associated partner universities from Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya and Nigeria.
Among key facilitators were outstanding international journalism and media authorities including Prof. Ralph Afolabi Akinfeleye of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, Burkinabe co-Principle investigator for the COMMPASS project Lassane Yameogo, Assistant Professor at the Ethiopian University of Agder Mulatu Alemayehu Moges, the chairperson of the University Council of Malawi Prof. John Kalenga Salca, Dr. William Tayebwa of Makerere University, Prof. Monica Chibita of UCU, while COMMPASS Principal Investigator Prof. Susanne Fengler was the conference co-ordinatior.
What COMPASS training beneficiaries say:
Chissono Semani, from the University of Livingstone, Malawi: Owing to the very limited knowledge I used to have about migration, I used to keep clear of reporting migration, and I erroneously used to think that migration was limited to refugees.
However, with more knowledge acquired later on, I realized that they were simply under represented. Many asylum seekers were not referred to as refugees and were called by their countries’ names.
After the COMMPASS course, I managed to write an article about the double-edged sword of the vice of migration. The course was very insightful, and the aspect of online learning is very important and vital.
Anthony Kizza of Makerere University: Topics covered on migration are very crucial; many of pour friends from the DR Congo and South Sudan were displaced by internal civil strife in their countries. While Ugandan refugees in other countries went there in search of jobs, treatment and education.
Owing to the scanty information on migration, many people travel outside their country without any idea about their fate, and that is how many ends up in slavery-like life.
Bill Dan Arnold Borodi, a journalism graduate (2023) at UCU who also enrolled for the COMPASS course: It is unfortunate that although Uganda has the biggest number of refugees in Africa, there is scanty information about their life but through COMMPASS training, I have learnt how to source and access information relevant for my work.
A lot of refugee issues and migration in general go unreported and this course has come as an eye opener. The course is rich and enriching, it nourished our knowledge. It was sort of a refresher course as far as African we are concerned.
