impactAFRICA Journalism Fund 2016 for Data-driven Investigative Storytelling – Round 3 ($USD 200,000 Grant)

Application Deadline: November 14, 2016.

 impactAFRICA  – Africa’s largest fund for data-driven investigative storytelling launches its second call for proposals today, seeking investigative story pitches by journalists in six countries.

Journalists with digital storytelling ideas that go beyond ordinary reporting to expose new or under-reported issues in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia stand to win cash grants, technology support, and editorial mentoring on their projects.

The initiative is part of impactAFRICA, a $500,000 programme to provide support for pioneering African journalism that uses data or digital tools to tackle development issues, such as public healthcare, water, sanitation, the effects of air and water pollution on African communities, climate change, and other development issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Eligibility

• impactAFRICA is open to applications from teams of journalists or news innovators from all across the world. impactAFRICA does not, however, support parachute journalism.
• All project teams should therefore include members from their target country, to ensure local context and local involvement in the storytelling.
• impactAFRICA also does not support window-dressing.
• Applicants should therefore ensure that all team members are integral to the project.

Benefits:

• The ten semi-finalists will all attend a StoryCamp to refine their project plans, and will then receive cash grants up to a maximum of $20,000 along with additional support from technologists and editorial experts to help produce their projects.
• The additional impactAFRICA prizes will recognise the best investigative report, the best data-driven story and the best service journalism project.

impactAFRICA will host a series of online StoryLab workshops and webinars ahead of the application deadline, with global experts and mentors, to help prospective applicants explore possible topics and to brainstorm solutions to technical challenges. Details about the skills programme, which is open to all Africans who want to participate, can be found here.

The initiative is run through a partnership between Code for Africa (CfAfrica) and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Arenstein founded CfAfrica in 2012 as an ICFJ initiative and continues to manage it as part of an ICFJ Knight Fellowship. A consortium of donors led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and including the World Bank is funding impactAFRICA.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the ImpactAFRICA Data-driven Journalism Fund