Media Diversity Institute

By Fredrick Mugira

Vincent Ayebare has spent more than a decade operating a boda boda—a commercial motorcycle taxi—in Mbarara City, Uganda. Every day, he is stationed right outside one of the city’s busiest media houses.

During dry seasons, Ayebare rides to the nearby River Rwizi, loads his motorcycle with yellow jerrycans filled with water, and ferries them to some households in the city. Over the years, this routine has made him a living repository of the river’s changing rhythms. He knows when the levels drop, when the colour changes, when the river refills again.

His knowledge is irreplaceable—the kind no satellite image or government report can replicate. Yet no journalist has ever sought his perspective. “They tell stories that concern us but never involve us,” Ayebare says, stressing that, “they (journalists) prefer big people.”

His experience points to a pattern. African environmental journalism has anchored itself to elite voices — diplomats, ...Read more