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Reporters from mainstream newspaper titles and community radio stations across Namibia spent two days unpacking their country's electoral process and sharing ideas to improve coverage over this period.

A presidential, parliamentary and regional council poll will be held November this year.

Over half the group, who came from as far as Keetmanshoop and Caprivi, had never covered an election or a political rally before. Those journalists who did cover political affairs told of daily frustration to report on these issues - poor government and political party communication, intimidation, capital (Windhoek) centred coverage and a shortage of resources to adequately report on issues from all parts of the country.

The Elections Reporting programme is part of a workshop series. In conjunction with MISA and ACCORD, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung is conducting a comprehensive series of journalistic skills development workshops on election reporting throughout the region.

During the course of 2004, five countries within the southern African region host national elections. These include Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa. The workshop focused on ethical issues in election reporting, highlighting and mainstreaming gender in coverage and the peculiar technical challenges facing print and radio reporters at this time.

The series started in 2003 with editors of various media from the respective countries working together in a three day workshop. They compiled and developed a code of conduct for election reporting.

In a second step, journalists and reporters from those media houses attended a four day workshop to get familiar with the code, the general necessities of reporting elections and insight into the electoral rules, institutions, political parties and programs in the respective countries.

In a third step, a series of national follow up workshops takes place a few weeks ahead of the elections in the different countries.

In a fourth step, participants' election reportage is gathered and analysed by independent researchers. The South African Media Monitoring Project was engaged by KAS to look at the participants' work and evaluate their skills in terms of reporting on electoral issues.

The results of the monitoring, as well as qualitative feedback regarding obstacles that participants experienced while reporting on the elections will be discussed with journalists and their editors at a joint conference later next year. This intervention will provide deeper insight into the needs of journalists and help improve electoral and political coverage in Southern Africa.