A ruling last week in a Ugandan landmark case of two journalists seeking to compel their government’s disclosure of multinationals oil deals highlighted the challenges to public transparency just before media leaders, press freedom advocates, officials, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gather in Ghana this week at the African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information.
The Committee To Protect Journalists reports that,Senior reporter Angelo Izama and Charles Mwanguhya Mpagi of Uganda’s leading independent newspaper Monitor filed the case to appeal the refusal of Uganda’s attorney general to provide them with certified copies of oil exploitation agreements—because of alleged confidentiality clauses in the documents—according to news reports. The journalists argued that the information was of public interest: Ugandans must be able to hold the government and its partners accountable for the exploitation of the oil.
For more click here