In parts of Africa most affected by biodiversity loss and climate stress, the problem is not an absence of events worth reporting. It is the difficulty of translating slow-moving ecological change, fragmented governance and contested evidence into journalism that travels beyond borders. The signals are often local, technical and politically inconvenient. Yet they shape global outcomes all the same.
Over the past decade, international interest in the Congo Basin, the Sahel and Central Africa has waxed and waned. Attention spikes around summits or crises, then recedes. What remains is the steady work of reporters who stay with these regions long after headlines move on, tracing how land use, energy choices, wildlife trade and misinformation interact on the ground.
The entry point may be human, but the subject is systemic. Forest governance that looks sound on paper but frays in practice. Conservation policies that succeed in one district and fail in the next. Communities adapting to climate stress with tools that are promising but incomplete. The task is not to simplify these dynamics, but to make them clear and relatable to audiences.
Aimable Twahirwa, a senior science journalist based in Kigali, has spent much of his career doing precisely that. After two and a half decades reporting across Central, East and West Africa, he joined Mongabay in 2024 to focus on regions that are often described in the abstract, but shaped by local realities. His work has examined wildlife trafficking routes, Indigenous roles in forest governance and the uptake of renewable energy in rural economies, including solar-powered irrigation for smallholder farmers.
What distinguishes this reporting is its persistence. Stories are built from fieldwork, long networks of scientific and local sources and a willingness to follow outcomes after publication. A recent multimedia project on solar-powered irrigation in Rwanda traced how smallholder farmers adopt new technologies, where costs remain prohibitive and how public and private actors shape access. The response, Twahirwa noted, did not end with clicks. It prompted follow-up inquiries from agricultural groups across the continent.
Underlying this approach is a concern about the information environment itself.
“Countering misinformation and science denial is critical to bolster public trust and fortify the news ecosystem against manipulation,” he told Alejandro Prescott-Cornejo in a recent interview.
In regions where environmental reporting can be politically sensitive and technically dense, accuracy is not an abstraction. It is a prerequisite for credibility.
Such work is rarely celebrated in real time. It accrues value slowly, as sources return, stories compound and audiences learn to trust that coverage will not disappear when attention shifts. In that sense, the measure of impact is not virality, but continuity.
Banner image: Twahirwa posing at Kuwinka, the main entrance for visitors at Nyungwe rainforest in southwestern Rwanda for field coverage. Image courtesy of Viateur Nzeyimana.
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