Climate media lab
The Climate Media Lab (CML) is a programme to empower journalists and content creators to tell better stories about the climate crisis, through ongoing individual mentorship and a series of seminars. The CML fellows make use of FFSA’s Climate Reporting Guide for SA Media and our newest Climate Hope resource. Its mentors are all highly experienced in climate writing, with a background in teaching and/or mentorship.
Seminars cover topics ranging from climate science basics to fireside chats with veteran climate storytellers and reporting on COP31.
The mentors hold regular meetings with their fellows, guiding them to develop and complete climate stories of their choice and to add climate context to other stories they produce.
The CML is funded by the African Climate Foundation.
Recently published pieces by our fellows
Floods. Droughts. Heatwaves. How people pay the price of extreme weather.
– By Shaazia Ebrahim for the Climate Justice Coalition
HPV vaccinations, MPXV reservoirs, climate change and childhood nutrition, malaria-related anaemia in pregnancy and the spread of cholera: A selection of recent research findings from across Africa.
– By Engela Duvenage for Nature Africa
Locked into coal: South Africa’s broken transition
– By Tulani Ngwenya for Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism
Meet our mentors
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Meet our mentors
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Meet our mentors
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Meet our mentors ✳︎ Meet our mentors ✳︎ Meet our mentors ✳︎
Dr Enoch Sithole
Dr Enock Sithole is the executive director of the Institute for Climate Change Communication (ICCC). He publishes Climate Current, a weekly climate change online newsletter. The ICCC works to raise awareness about climate change through research and training of climate activists, journalists and communication professionals.
Dr Sithole is a former journalism lecturer at the Wits Centre for Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand. He previously worked as a journalist and executive in several institutions, including the New Nation newspaper, the South
African Broadcasting Corporation and the Constitutional Assembly. He holds a PhD in climate change communication. He researches on diverse areas of climate change, including policy, adaptation, journalism and communication as well as community radio.
He has addressed various conferences and written for various news media on climate change-related issues.
Sheree Bega
Sheree Bega is a seasoned journalist with 26 years of experience. She joined the Mail & Guardian in October 2020 as an environment reporter, where she specialises in covering environmental issues including the climate crisis, water scarcity, pollution, waste management and biodiversity, with a focus on in-depth reporting that highlights South Africa’s environmental challenges.
Before this, she spent 15 years at the Saturday Star as news editor and senior reporter, much of it covering environmental stories, and has also worked at ThisDay, The Star, Business Report and the Mail & Guardian. She has received multiple national and regional awards for environmental journalism, including Vodacom Journalist of the Year honours, SAB Environmental Journalist of the Year awards and SANParks Kudu Awards recognition between 2011 and 2019.
Marcia Moyana
Marcia Moyana is an award-winning freelance journalist from South Africa. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Journalism from the Tshwane University of Technology and is currently enrolled for an MA Degree in Journalism at the Stellenbosch University. Marcia is currently an associate at Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism unit and also works as a freelancer who specialises in health, science and climate change.
She started working as a freelancer in 2018 and so far she has written for publications like Health-e News, the Mail & Guardian, Alliance for Science, Global Health Now, Dialogue Earth, Wits Curiosity Magazine and Lesotho publication, Newsday.
Marcia is one of about 60 global fellows in the 2025 Reporting on Rare Diseases fellowship under the National Press Foundation, one of 10 grant winners of the 2024 Reporting on Climate Change in Africa grant supported by the Wits Centre for Journalism and Dialogue Earth, one of 40 African health and science journalists who were part of the 2023 inaugural Conference on Public Health in Africa (CPHIA) Journalism fellowship. She was one of four African journalists who were selected by the African Development Bank to report on the COP28 conference for Climate Change in Dubai. She was in the 2022 Early Childhood Development Global Reporting fellowship program from the Dart Center for Journalism. She is also an alumni of the 2021 fellowship from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Gender Justice Reporting Initiative.