Delivering justice through media in Zambia

In 2022, BBC Media Action launched the Moto ('Fire' in Nyanja language) Initiative, working with female journalists from radio and TV outlets across the country. Ahead of World Press Freedom Day, alumni journalist Angela Mtambo tells us how the training has helped shape her journalism career.

Angela was working for Radio Luswepo in Zambia’s Northern Province, based in a rural community in the Mbala district, when she joined the Moto project in 2022.

She had a passion for reporting on community stories affecting “people who are unable to speak for themselves”.

The training enabled her to develop investigative journalism skills, on-location reporting, online content creation, fact-checking, hard interviews and news story writing. With these new skills, she decided to report on a key issue in her community: retired council workers in Mbala district who had not received the pension payments owed to them by the government.

Some of the staff had worked at the council for more than 20 years, but because they had not been paid their pension, they had been left living in poverty, Angela said.

Angela started following up with the local authority who, despite deducting monies from now-retired employees, had never remitted the funds to their pension scheme. The pensions scheme had sued the council and won 25.7 million kwachas (about £690,000 GBP) over their case, but even then, the council still had not paid the pension authority. Angela investigated the story, speaking to those affected.

She found a trail of hardship: unfinished buildings, half-cultivated farmland, and children forced to drop out of school because their parents couldn't afford shoes or uniforms. Families struggled to make ends meet, their financial stability shattered. The affected individuals told her their pension contributions had not been remitted by the council. One case involved a woman denied retirement benefits due to a discrepancy between her employment contract and her National Registration Card.

After Angela aired the story on Radio Luswepo, there was a meeting between the council and the pension authority. Six months after her story, the retired workers began receiving their pension funds – a result she was happy with.

“I’m very confident now that I can do interviews with the authorities and have the confidence to go in the field and meet people facing different challenges,” she said.

“Freedom in press means you’re supposed to be free as a journalist to speak to the authorities, find out the issues people are experiencing, and the people responsible should be ready to speak to me and address my concerns. Press freedom is like democracy. When you look at democracy, people are supposed to talk about issues and be led and have solutions by the end of the day.

“We want to help those who do not have the voice to speak; we stand as people to speak for those people who cannot speak.”

Asked about her hopes for future, Angela said: “I want to see journalism and freedom of media be completely free. As a journalist, I’m keen to see results after a story, if not immediately then as a gradual process. My co-existence in journalism is to bring out issues that are going to be settled and not remain hanging.”

The Moto (Fire) Initiative is part of the Funsani (meaning “Ask”) and Deepening Democracy Facility projects carried out in partnership with Free Press Initiative (FPI) and Makanday, and funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).