Ghana Journalists Partner with Scientists on Climate Stories

Reporters and scientists in Ghana are teaming up in an unusual partnership to transform how climate change gets covered across the country.

The CLARE R4I Initiative is funding JoyNews to connect journalists with climate researchers, creating stories grounded in evidence and lived experience. The goal is simple: close the gap between what scientists know, what policymakers need, and what communities are actually experiencing on the ground.

Grace O'Donovan, Programme Manager for the CLARE R4I Opportunities Fund at SouthSouthNorth, calls the collaboration "extremely unique." Instead of journalists chasing headlines alone, they now have direct access to research data and can verify their reporting with experts in real time.

The focus is on Ghana's most vulnerable regions, where climate impacts hit hardest. Journalists are learning to tell stories that go beyond disaster reporting to highlight the practical solutions communities are already using to adapt.

These aren't just news stories. They're feeding into national policy frameworks like Ghana's National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions, which guide the country's climate resilience strategy.

The Ripple Effect

What happens in Ghana won't stay in Ghana. By documenting how local communities adapt to climate challenges, this project is bringing African voices and solutions into global climate conversations.

Too often, climate adaptation knowledge flows from the Global North to Africa. This initiative flips that script, showing the world what's already working on the continent.

The stories emerging from this partnership are expected to do more than inform readers. They're designed to empower local populations, showcase practical adaptation strategies, and inspire collective action across communities facing similar challenges.

For international climate policy makers, these evidence-based narratives provide context-specific insights that generic reports can't capture. They show what resilience actually looks like when it's built from the ground up.

Ghana's experiment in collaborative journalism could become a model for climate reporting worldwide, proving that the best stories happen when storytellers and scientists work side by side.