More investigative stories on China, Coke and oil

Today is Eid al-Hajj, the Islamic festivity of pilgrimage, when millions of Muslims gather in Mecca and Medina. It’s also a public holiday in all Islamic countries, Tanzania among them with its roughly fifty-fifty share of people being Muslims or Christians. So early this morning, the singing could be heard from the mosques all over Dar es Salaam, and some of the participants were there as well.

But public holiday or nor, we are now still in class, however, due to the fact that the exact date of Eid was announced only last week. And our timetable was settled already weeks before, when the Islamic calendars claimed that Eid would take place on Sunday, that is, the day after tomorrow. On Wednesday, when we started the training, it was agreed among the Muslim participants that on the day of Eid they can leave the training for the day prayers if they so wish.

In the class today, the participants have spent most of the time searching for information to stories on one of the following assignments:

China and Africa
Opportunities and challenges
Find facts and figures from the web on trade and investments. Which are the main sectors that Chinese companies are focusing on in Africa?
How do the African countries benefit? How do ordinary people react to Chinese business in Africa? Write a story and link to sources online.

Coca-Cola in India
Write a short commentary about how the soda factories of Coca-Cola Company have affected the environment and lives of local communities in India.
Add links to your sources.

Shell in Nigeria
Write a compact story about the environmental consequences of oil production in Nigeria.
What did a recent report by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reveal about the situation on the ground in Ogoniland?
Provide links to your sources.

The procedure was such that the participants were given personal feedback for the first drafts that they published in their blogs, and afterwards they had good time to develop their stories, edit them and add links to their original sources.

The search tips from the previous days were supposed to be kept in mind: Think first what you are searching for. Use the right search words. Go though many sources, so you get a good picture of the contexts and you will also find interesting details. Then structure your story in your mind and paper. Copy-pasting should of course be avoided. Instead, if necessary, good background stories found could be printed for underlining and reference during the writing process.

Here are the links to the stories of the participants. For China and Africa, see the stories of Njonjo Mfaume, Simon Berege and Ratifa Baranyikwa. Coca-Cola activities in India were chosen by Erick Mchome, Timothy Kitundu, Ali Othman and Jabir Idrissa. Here’s also Jabir’s story in Kiswahili. Shell in Nigeria was chosen as the research topic by Flora Rugashoborola and Agnes Shija. Flora and Agnes this time coached each others. They paired up, read each others’ draft stories, shared ideas and gave feedback and then went back to finalize their stories with the suggestions they received from each others.