impactAfrica Fund

Application Deadline: March 15, 2017.

NEW REPORTING CONTEST: Send Impact Africa your stories and win a tour to major newsrooms in the United States.

Gender equality and the challenges women and girls face in accessing health care has a major effect on societies.

Applications are open for the fourth round of the impactAfrica Fund to support pioneering data journalism and innovative reporting that tackles development issues, such as public healthcare, in in six African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

impactAFRICA will support projects that use data journalism and other digital storytelling techniques for in-depth reportage into hidden, neglected or under-reported development issues. Projects should propose innovative ways to use digital techniques for compelling storytelling with dramatically improved audience engagement, and should use data or other digital techniques to personalise or localise stories for improved relevance and maximum impact.

Eligibility Criteria

• 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.
• Eligible Countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia

Benefits

• All 10 finalists will receive production grants to enable them to produce their stories, along with technology support, journalistic mentoring, and support on issues ranging from audience strategies to syndication of the content.
• The size of the production grant will be determined by the detailed budget workshopped for each project by the applicant and impactAFRICA.
• The resulting stories will reviewed by a jury, and three winners will be selected for an additional cash prize.