THAT IS NOT CLIMATE COMMUNICATION! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!

The email is still vivid in my mind.

“Please can you just come and take photos of our workshop and post them on social media?”
Please, we have visitors. We need photos. Please take communication along.

I paused before replying.
Not because I was busy. Not because I was unwilling. But because I knew the request was not about climate communication. It was about photography. Nothing more.

Across climate projects in West Africa, communication professionals are quietly being redefined. Not as interpreters of science. Not as translators of risk. But as official photographers with Wi-Fi. The routine is familiar. Arrive early. Capture the keynote. Snap the banner. Line everyone up for the group photo. Post it. Add the word impact to the caption. Everyone relaxes. Something has been “done”. Nothing changes.

Somewhere along the line, we confused visibility with meaning. We began to believe that if it appeared online, it must have mattered. Climate communication slipped from helping people make sense of change to simply proving that an event happened.

I have sometimes said no. Not as rebellion, but as responsibility. Because communication that does not clarify relevance, explain consequences, or guide decisions is not communication. Sometimes the most honest thing a communicator can do is refuse visibility when there is no intention to foster understanding.

Photography helps communicators tell the story better! But communication is not a photo album. It is interpretation. Direction. Accountability. And it cannot be borrowed language. In farming communities in northern Ghana or rural Mali, people talk about failed rains, empty granaries, rising food prices, and migration. They do not speak like project proposals. If people cannot retell your message in their own words, communication has failed.

Nor is fear enough. Across the Sahel, warnings arrive on time, but guidance does not. Fear without direction is lazy communication.

Climate communication in West Africa does not suffer from silence. It suffers from avoidance. Until communicators are trusted to think, question, interpret, and sometimes say no, climate action will remain loud, colourful, and thin. Visible, yes. Transformative, no. And no amount of good lighting will fix that.


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