Dataphyte Academy, the training arm of Dataphyte, organised a two-day hybrid Climate Data Lab training for journalists and newsroom editors on how to interpret and leverage climate data to inform policy decisions and drive climate action.
The training, held on May 29th and 30th, 2025, brought together journalists reporting on climate, climate advocates, and civil society representatives working on climate change and environmental sustainability.
Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges, with far-reaching impacts on ecosystems, economies, and societies, as evident in Nigeria. However, despite frequent occurrences of climate-related events, such as desertification, sea-level rise, global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental challenges like flooding, there is limited comprehensive data and information on climate change in Nigeria. Data on the causes, socioeconomic impacts, and early warning indicators are either scarce or entirely missing.
Even when such data exists, journalists, advocates, and civil society organisations often struggle to interpret and analyse it, largely due to limited technical capacity for data analysis and reporting. As part of its commitment to being a leading provider of training and technical resources in data collection, aggregation, and analytics in Africa, Dataphyte, through its training platform Dataphyte Academy, organised the Climate Data Training.
The aim was to equip journalists with essential data analytics skills needed to effectively report climate stories and inform public discourse and policy.
The first day of the training focused on enhancing participants’ understanding of climate issues, the importance of data in addressing them, and foundational tools for climate data analysis and advocacy. It featured sessions on strategic communications for climate action, climate change in Nigeria, and why data matters, data for accountability and advocacy, an introduction to GIS tools for climate data, and a practical session on how to work with climate data.
During his session on data for accountability and advocacy, Joshua Olufemi, Executive Director of Dataphyte (Dataphyte Academy), emphasised the importance of data as a tool for demanding climate accountability and driving advocacy. “Climate change is not just a story; it’s something that affects us all,” Mr. Olufemi highlighted.
Kehinde Ogunyale, Dataphyte Academy Coordinator, spoke about the power of strategic communication, urging participants to ask the important questions about what needs to change and how to go about achieving it.
“Reporting, even from a data perspective, isn’t just about reading the numbers; it is about observing patterns and understanding the social issues they reveal,” Mr. Ogunyale noted.
The second day of the training, focused on application and storytelling, covered crafting impactful climate stories, sectoral deep dives, and digital tools for data dissemination.
Participants engaged in sessions on storytelling, climate change data, and deforestation in Nigeria, the Nigerian energy sector and climate change, interpreting numbers for climate storytelling, and a digital tools demo introducing them to Goloka. The training concluded with a hands-on session featuring data-driven story pitches and group work.
