The African Story Challenge (TASC) is a project of reporting grants set up to spur innovative multimedia storytelling by African journalists, with the aim of encouraging better policies and greater public engagement on issues that matter to Africans. During a two-year run (March 2013-March 2015), the project awarded 103 grants worth more than $500,000 to African journalists, resulting in nearly 300 in-depth and innovative stories circulated in major media across the continent. Below is a showcase of some of the stories developed around the themes of Agriculture, Health, Business and Technology.
Diseases: Prevention and Treatment
1st Place-South Africa: Coughing up for Gold
An in-depth, multi-media story that looks at the suffering of former mine workers in South Africa who suffer from TB & Silicosis after working in the mining industry for many years.
2nd Place-South Africa: Shots in the dark? Vaccinations in South Africa
An investigation into vaccine stock-outs and poor storage in major cities from Gauteng to Mpumalanga, in South Africa
3rd Place-Cameroon: Bad roads keeps heart patients from care
This story is an investigation into the impact of non-health infrastructure (in this case roads) on access to quality health care for heart patients in Cameroon.
See all the Diseases: Prevention and Treatment stories
Business and Technology
1st Place-Nigeria: The App that saved 1000 lives
A story about how technology was used to track government funds released to communities affected by lead poisoning in Bagega, Nigeria
2nd Place-Nigeria: Africa’s “Dollar-a-day” Schools
A story about the exponential growth of low-cost private schools in cities throughout Africa, highlighting increased investor interest in the low-cost education sector
3rd Place-Uganda: The trials of cross border traders
An investigation into cross border trade in East Africa, through the experience of a Ugandan egg trader.
See all the Business and Technology stories
Agriculture and Food Security
1st Place-Ghana:Phone farming: How SMS is changing agriculture in Ghana
The story Investigates how simple SMS technology is transforming the lives of poor rural farmers and its potential to change Ghana’s agricultural sector. Many hitherto poor farmers are now sending their children to school, building modern houses, and life generally better for those who have discovered and signed on to the technology.
2nd Place-South Africa: Crumbs of the breadbasket – inequalities in SA agriculture
Thanks entirely to its history of colonisation, segregation and development along racial lines, South Africa has decimated its small-scale farming class. It’s the sector of society that, everywhere else in Sub-Saharan Africa, provides relative food security as well as a collective 60 percent of the labour force. This story explores the inequalities in S.A’s agriculture sector
3rd Place-Somalia: Farming amidst fighting
Somalia is said to be Africa’s most ‘troubled child.’ It is known for all the wrong reasons; hunger, drought, internal conflicts and terror attacks. But there is a positive side of Somalia, that is, large scale farming that could boost the war torn country’s economy. This is the untold story of Somalia.
See all the Agriculture and Food Security stories