Lusaka Communicating Science and Research Conference (28-30 September 2016)

Panos Institute Southern Africa (PSAf) in conjunction with its partners is holding a three-day Communicating Science and Research Conference which seeks to bring together science journalists from Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as policy makers, corporate bodies, scientists, and researchers to network and share information on the latest scientific innovations and breakthroughs in the field of agriculture, mining, health and the environment.  The event will create an opportunity for journalists covering these fields to attend workshops and mentoring sessions, and to learn from the scientific community, who will showcase their latest research findings or products.  Equally, it will give the science/research community the opportunity to engage with the media and communicators to find more effective ways to communicate about their research and findings. 

The conference has the following objectives:

1. To showcase emerging trends and topical issues in the areas of diversified media content development and communicating policy, science and research to the end users (rural poor and marginalised communities);
2. To illuminate various science, agriculture, health, environmental, and extractive industry projects and events likely to have an impact on the development agenda of the continent;
3. To build the capacity of the media to report and cover specialist fields of science, health research, agriculture, environment, and extractive industries among others; and
4. To strengthen networking among players (journalists covering science, agriculture, health, environment and extractive industry; and scientists, researchers and policy makers etc.) in order to improve understanding of each other’s field and create a mutually supportive working relationship. 

 The three-day conference will be divided into:

• Field trips to thematic companies for product success demonstration, agricultural product/methods/fields display, and/or to view latest scientific products or trends.
• Media capacity building workshops and training on latest media scholarly works; and science/research corporate body presentations and lectures.
• Mentoring and networking meetings of science journalists and community media practitioners.

Registration Information:

For more information on registration, please contact Elias Banda at elias@panos.org.zm