Citi launches financial journalist training in Egypt

In line with its longstanding commitment to Egypt, Citi collaborated with Ahram Canadian University (ACU) to host the first edition of the Citi Financial Journalist Training (CFJT) in the country.

The training aligned with the bank’s promise to building capacity and taking advantage of its global resources to strengthen the knowledge base in the financial industry across the globe.

The one-day workshop, which was held earlier this year in several countries across Middle East and Africa, took place in Fairmont Nile Towers and was attended by 12 business journalists. The day involved 6 sessions that covered different topics and were conducted by Citi Egypt team, ACU professors and deputy editors.

“With over 200 years of global expertise in the financial services market, this workshop aims to provide participants with first-hand experience in the fundamentals of financial reporting from both banking and educational perspectives.” said Nadir Shaikh, Citi Egypt Country Officer. “We are proud to partner with; Ahram Canadian University, one of the biggest names in education and media.” Nadir explained that “Journalists today are responsible for shaping the public’s interest in making informed decisions. We always rely on the press to provide accurate, time sensitive information which will help strengthen the financial system in the country.”

Topics covered during the training included financial reporting and its ethics; overview of the financial media landscape in Egypt and the challenges facing financial journalists; understanding and analysing economic reports and indicators; and the types of news sources and how to use them. Facilitators included Mohamed Abd El Kader, Country Treasurer and Markets Head at Citi Egypt, Dr. Inas Abou Youssef, Dean of Mass Communication at ACU, Nadia El Gowely, Deputy Editor of Reuters Arabic Service, Khalifa Adham, Editor In Chief of Al Ahram Iktesady and Deputy Editor at Al Ahram Newspaper and Omaima Kamal, Deputy Editor at Al Akhbar Newspaper.

Prof. Inas Abou Youssef expressed her gratitude for being part of a unique journalistic training that combines knowledge with skills to create an example of collaboration between academic and banking institutions in Egypt. “Gaining practical experience of the Egyptian financial media landscape provided by ACU and Citibank is unprecedented,” she stated. “The one-day workshop provided journalists with the tools to master the financial language in order to both simplify it for normal readers and cover it analytically for finance professionals and investors.”

With over 30 years of experience in journalism, Nadia El Gowely said that it is crucial to continuously sharpen journalists’ tools of trade and provide them with guidance on how to steer the often-complex relationship with sources and tackle ethical dilemmas. “Empowering journalists to take ethical decisions is all the more important in today’s rather challenging media landscape,” Nadia stated.

During his session, Khalifa Adham discussed how the media landscape changed over the years with emphasis on digital media and how is technology shaping the public interest in making informed decisions

Talking about the importance of financial statistics and how readers interpret them, Omaima Kamal, mentioned that quality reportage and commentary impact the pocket books of everyone from governments to individuals. From her side, Dr. Inas added, “Having an informal classroom style dialogue was very beneficial for all of the attendees to learn from each other. The techniques and principles circulated in today’s workshop were collated from decades of experience.”

The Citi Financial Journalist Training was held this year in Nigeria, Zambia, Pakistan, Kenya, Cameroon, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco.