Announcing the Africa News Innovation Challenge winners

Digital tools are an increasing impetus for innovation across African newsrooms. From crowdsourcing content to using infographics to tell stories, journalists are finding new ways to report the news. We're excited to be supporting these innovators through the $1 million Africa News Innovation Challenge, announced in May this year—the latest in a series of projects to spur innovation in African journalism.

Run by the the African Media Initiative, other partners include Omidyar Network, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the U.S. State Department, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The response to the challenge was really enthusiastic, with more than 500 proposals submitted.

The 20 winners are all exciting digital journalism projects that will contribute to solving some of the biggest challenges facing the African media industry. They range from mobile apps to mobilise citizens against corruption and improved infographics to communicate complex issues, to developing new platforms for sharing content on buses and taxis. Key themes among the projects include a growing concern about manipulated online content, the security of communications with whistleblowers and sources, and the need to improve engagement with audiences.

The projects have the potential to be replicated by media elsewhere in Africa, or to be scaled up across the continent, to create wide and sustained impact. Some projects will also develop new tools to support newsrooms and boost media revenues to support sustainable journalism. Winners will receive cash grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000; technology support from a team of four developers at AMI’s jAccelerator lab in Kenya, and business development support from top media strategists affiliated with the World Association of Newspapers & News Publishers. Ten of the winners will also be flown to the Knight Foundation’s annual M.I.T. Civic Media Conference in the U.S., while the rest will be showcased at other important industry events.

The ANIC winners are:

• actNOW (Ghana)
• AdBooker (South Africa)
• Africa Check (South Africa / Nigeria)
• skyCAM (Kenya / Nigeria)
• Africa’s Wealth (renamed NewsStack) (Nigeria / Namibia)
• Citizen Desk (Mozambique)
• Code4Ghana (Ghana)
• ConvergeCMS (Kenya / Tanzania / Uganda)
• CorruptionNET (South Africa)
• DataWrapper (Nigeria / Senegal / Tanzania)
• End-to-End (renamed LastMile Crowdmapping) (Liberia / Ghana / Kenya)
• FlashCast (Kenya)
• Green Hornet (South Africa)
• ListeningPost (South Africa)
• MoJo: Keeping media honest by monitoring online journalism (South Africa)
• openAFRICA (Kenya / Nigeria / Rwanda / South Africa)
• ODADI (renamed Code4SouthAfrica) (South Africa)
• Oxpeckers (South Africa)
• Wikipedia Zero (Cameroon / Ivory Coast / Tunisia / Uganda)
• ZeroNews (pan-African)

You can learn more about the winners’ projects on the ANIC website.

We can’t wait to see how these innovations unfold and we look forward to working with more African journalists to help them use technologies to tell important stories.

Posted by Julie Taylor, Communications Manager, Sub Saharan Africa

(Cross-posted from the Africa Blog)