Lack of Skilled Business Reporters hinders the growth of Capital Market Reporting in Rwanda

Rwanda’s Media High Council and the Country’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) are seeking ways of having skilled media reporters who can report business stories that can contribute to the country’s development as well as to enable citizens make informed decisions regarding the financial business.

As indicated by research findings on Media Capacity Gaps in Rwanda, Economical and Finance reporting is one of the gaps. There is a need to empower business media practitioners with skills on covering such areas.

It is believed that media need to understand the capital market phenomenon and be able to disseminate accurate and adequate information about it.

Media High Council and CMA regularly conduct Media Training on Capital Market reporting, however a big number of reporters in Rwanda are still questioning themselves on their business reporting skills.   

Speaking at Business Reporters training in Kigali, the Executive Secretary of Rwanda’s Media High Council Peacemaker Mbungiramihigo with reference to James T. Hamilton from Stanford University said “Business Reporting is the best choice because it offers the chance to combine the best data journalism and storytelling”

He added that “”Reporters should also play a watchdog role to identify malpractices in business and financial sector…and this makes leaders accountable on what they are assigned to do”. He was explaining that the business reporting space is wider and journalists can even investigate for instance corruption in business sector and that can make a good story.”

Up to date CMA agrees that “Being a relatively new and growing industry in the country’s business ecosystem, business reporters still lack required basic skills to cover the Rwanda Capital Market business comprehensively.”

According to Migisha Magnifique who is the CMA’s Public Relations Officer, “Reporters often focus on financial business reporting and very few cover the Capital Market due to limited knowledge on the industry.”

For this reason, CMA and Media High Council decided that “Continuous Media trainings will help to fill that gap.”

Sabiti Daniel, one of the business reporters observed that “Really in Rwanda we don’t have advanced business reporting skills, what we need is progressive trainings. We need to start with simple thing and advance progressively.”

However, Eric Bundungu, the Acting Director at CMA noted that “There are some experienced business Reporters who are doing good job” while for others, he adds, “through your daily reporting you will gradually become experienced business reporters.”

Bundungu explained that training business reporters is a refresher to take them beyond Market Report and beyond event coverage.

“What we need from you is not just reporting about the training, go and do business stories and we at CMA and our partners we are ready to help you.” Bundungu urges.