ICFJ Knight Roundup: Code for Africa plans its future

par Jefferson Mok
30 oct 2018 dans Data Journalism
notes

Each week as part of the Knight International Media Innovators blog, the ICFJ Knight team will round up stories focused on how their fellows are making an impact in the field. Find out more about the fellows' projects by clicking here.

The trajectory of Code for Africa, a weeklong hackathon in Moldova, upcoming events across Latin America and more from the Knight Fellows in this week’s roundup.

ICFJ team meets with key media innovators in South Africa

ICFJ’s Knight Fellowships team is in Cape Town, South Africa, this week meeting with ICFJ Knight Fellows, Code for Africa (CfAfrica), Code for South Africa, and the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting to organize a four-country data journalism initiative. The three-year Gates-funded project has three fellows embedded in Code for Africa hubs in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and two fellows providing strategic leadership and audience engagement expertise.

CfAfrica, a data-journalism initiative, was founded by Knight Fellow Justin Arenstein in 2012. The pan-African Fellows team now includes Stephen Abbott Pugh, Chris Roper, Tunde Akpeji, Raymond Joseph and Catherine Gicheru. By 2016, the team plans to open a CfAfrica hub in Tanzania.

Other news from Africa:

  • With generous funding from the Indigo Trust, Code for South Africa will recruit two data journalism fellows to boost data literacy in partner organizations in Johannesburg and Cape Town as part of the School of Data project for 2015.
  • Abbott talks to ICFJ about his past experiences working on audience engagement initiatives at the Guardian and on opening data access to the public in Rwanda. Read more about his work and his fellowship vision.

Rise Moldova seeks eight coders to participate in weeklong hackathon

Recent Knight Fellow Friedrich Lindenberg and Rise Moldova, an investigative journalists association in Moldova and Romania, are organizing a weeklong event to build investigative journalism tools in July. Coders in Moldova have until the end of today (June 26) to register.

Upcoming Media Innovation Boot Camps in Latin America

Media Factory, a news accelerator project created by Knight Fellow Mariano Blejman, is hosting digital media boot camps this summer throughout Latin America. Each session invites an accomplished digital journalist from abroad to train attendees on new content delivery and audience engagement skills. The next events are July 9 in Buenos Aires, July 11 in Santiago and July 18 in Lima. Check out Media Factory’s website for more information.

Chequeado holds free public event in Buenos Aires to clean up Cargografias’ database

On June 27, HacksLabs Challenge winner Chequeado, a fact-checking organization based in Buenos Aires, will demonstrate how to refine a database to improve its accuracy and reliability. The data will help nonprofit organization Cargografias construct historical timelines of government officials’ time in office.

Main image CC-licensed via Flickr by Bala Sivakumar