Africa Health Communications Fellowship 2025

The Africa Health Communications Fellowship 2025 brought together journalists and health experts to produce accurate, compelling, and people-centred health stories that communities can trust and act on.

Across six African countries, fellows collaborated across disciplines to translate complex health evidence into real-world storytelling, tackling under-reported issues, countering misinformation, and amplifying lived experience through film, radio, print, and digital media.

Why Journalist–Health Expert Collaboration Matters

Across Africa, journalists and health experts often work in parallel, but rarely together. This fellowship intentionally brought them into collaboration – combining journalistic storytelling skills with scientific and public health expertise.

The result is work that is credible, engaging, and grounded in lived realities: stories that communities recognise, trust, and act on.

What makes this fellowship different

The Africa Health Communications Fellowship was practice-driven, collaborative, and output-focused. Fellows did not just learn about storytelling, they produced real work for real audiences, under real-world conditions.

How the Fellowship Worked

Over the course of the year-long fellowship, 30 fellows from six African countries completed a five-module Health Communications e-learning course, participated in monthly webinars, and attended a three-day in-person conference.

They were trained to verify sources, interrogate data, and challenge misinformation, while translating complex health evidence into clear, people-centred narratives.

In the final stage, cross-disciplinary teams undertook grant-funded collaborative reporting projects, balancing data with lived experience to ensure stories were emotionally compelling without compromising accuracy or context.

With ongoing mentorship, teams produced work across multiple formats — film, radio, op-eds, and digital media — resulting in stories that are not only accurate, but relevant, relatable, and trusted.

The work showcased here reflects that approach: evidence-informed, locally rooted, and designed for real-world impact.

Stories Designed for Impact