africanstory – The African Story Challenge

June 13, 2017

Themes

To enter the competition, please fill in the entry form, which includes space for a mandatory 250 word proposal on one of our themes. We have provided you with key subject areas under each of the themes. Your proposal can either be based directly on one of these subject areas or you also have the option of sending your own original story idea, as long as it fits within the framework of the themes. Only ONE entry is allowed per theme so choose your best story idea.

Agriculture and Food security

Agricultural finance, markets and food prices
Land reform and ownership
Nutrition
Irrigation and tools for improved farming
Biotechnology
Livestock and fisheries

Diseases: Prevention and Treatment

Sanitation and water-borne diseases
Infectious and non-infectious diseases
Neglected diseases
Vaccines and immunization

Business and Technology

The competition closes for entries on 23rd May 2014

Employment
Innovation and entrepreneurship
Corruption and transparency
Investment and incentives

Original Idea

You can also enter any cycle of the competition that is open using your own original story idea. Ensure that it fits within the five broad themes provided.

June 13, 2017

PRESS RELEASE: New Grants to Support African Business Reporting

We are now receiving entries in the Business ad technology Category of the Competition

Nairobi, Kenya, March 4, 2014 – The African Media Initiative (AMI) is pleased to announce new funding opportunities for business and technology stories in its pan-African journalism competition.

The African Story Challenge is now inviting applications from individual journalists and newsrooms with unique story ideas or projects on business and technology that can only be produced with substantial support.

The top twenty multimedia projects that show the best potential for adopting innovative storytelling techniques using data journalism tools, will be shortlisted for the final prize and will be awarded grants of up to $20,000 to produce them for broadcast and publication.

Shortlisted stories will focus on any topical business and technology angle of interest to a wider African audience. The winning journalists and organisations will employ in-depth research and investigative journalism and engage in cross-platform approaches and interactive applications to ensure the story reaches as many people as possible on a variety of media devices.

The African Story Challenge advisory council comprising senior journalists and editors will oversee the shortlisting process. The projects that will be identified to be eligible for funding will be approved upon signature of a legal contract. The finalists will be brought together for intensive sessions to improve their project ideas.

An independent international panel of editors and media experts will judge the entries. Grantees who produce the best stories published or broadcast in media that reach African audiences will win cash prizes or a major reporting trip abroad.

The African Story Challenge is a project of the African Media Initiative (AMI), the continent’s largest association of media owners and operators. AMI Content Development Director and former Knight International Journalism Fellow Joseph Warungu is leading the project. The Knight Fellowships are administered by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).

“This competition aims at encouraging and supporting African media to promote a better quality of life for our people by producing more and better stories on the issues that really matter” said Warungu, a former BBC Africa Editor. “Politics is important, but it’s not everything.”

AMI Chief Executive Amadou Mahtar Ba added, “It’s widely acknowledged that Africa is on the rise and leading the way on many fronts such as mobile money. To continue telling this story of growth and innovation well, the media in Africa must be supported and strengthened. AMI is committed to this goal through the Story Challenge and by finding disruptive digital ideas for improving the way that news is collected and disseminated.”

The African Story Challenge runs on thematic cycles. The first one was on Agriculture and Food Security and the second one, which is coming to an end, has been on Health. The new cycle on Business and Technology was launched today with a panel discussion on business reporting in Africa organised jointly with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The panel featured NSE Chief Executive Peter Mwangi, IC Publications Group Publisher and chair of the competition judging panel, Omar Ben Yedder, Nation Media Group NTV Business Editor Wallace Kantai, Alex Gakuru, Regional Coordinator for Africa of Creative Commons, and Andrea Bohnstedt, publisher of Ratio Magazine.

The African Story Challenge is supported by an $800,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The programme also has support from the African Development Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

Ends….

For more information or to request an interview, kindly contact:

Maimouna Jallow

Project Manager, African Story Challenge

Tel: + 254 701 572 757 / [email protected]

Joseph Warungu

Editor & Project Director, African Story Challenge

Tel: +254-722-708-370 / [email protected]

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017

About The African Story Challenge

The African Story Challenge was a $1m programme of reporting grants aimed at spurring in-depth, multimedia storytelling that engages citizens and improving the health and prosperity of Africans.

The two-year, pan-African project challenged journalists to embrace a bold form of journalism that seeks solutions using digital and data-driven techniques. The project encouraged journalists to experiment with new content ideas and ways to engage audiences through mobile technology, social media and other innovative tools.

The project also aimed to hold leaders accountable and spur better policies on topics that matter to Africans, such as agricultural growth, good health, quality education and better jobs.

Over two years, the project awarded approximately 100 reporting grants and provide mentoring to support the best ideas for stories on development issues. Journalists who produced the best stories published or broadcast in media that reached African audiences were awarded cash prizes or a major international reporting trip.

June 13, 2017

Twenty Finalists Emerge in $1 Million Story Challenge

Twenty journalists have been shortlisted as finalists in the Agriculture and Food Security theme of the $1 million African Story Challenge Programme

Nairobi, Kenya July 23, 2013 – Twenty journalists have been shortlisted as finalists in the $1 million African Story Challenge, a new programme of reporting grants to encourage innovative, multi-media storytelling that aims to improve the health and prosperity of Africans.

The two-year project encourages journalists to experiment with new content ideas and ways to engage audiences through mobile technology, social media and other innovative tools. It also aims to spur compelling, analytical, investigative and data-driven stories that lead to better policies, increase transparency and hold officials accountable.

In all, 315 entries from across the continent were screened by a technical review panel that evaluated which ideas have the best potential to become top-quality stories on agriculture and food security, the first of five themed categories covered by the challenge. Other contest categories include disease prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, and business and technology.

“We are thrilled that we received so many fine ideas from journalists who want to tackle agriculture and food-related issues critical to their communities and the continent,” said Story Challenge director Joseph Warungu.

Finalists will attend a Story Camp in Naivasha, Kenya in August to refine their ideas and learn digital and data journalism tools to enhance their work and ensure maximum public engagement. They also will receive grants and mentoring to complete the projects. After their broadcast or publication, an international panel of editors and media experts will judge the shortlisted twenty stories to select the competition winners.

In addition to the 20 finalists, 35 journalists who were not shortlisted will receive smaller grants to assist them in completing their stories.

Over two years, the project will award approximately 100 major reporting grants and provide mentoring to support the best ideas for stories on development issues. Journalists who produce the best stories published or broadcast in media that reach African audiences will win cash prizes or a major international reporting trip.

The Story Challenge is a project of theAfrican Media Initiative (AMI), the continent’s largest association of media owners and operators, in partnership with the International Center for Journalists. Warungu, who is AMI’s content development manager, developed the project while an ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow attached to AMI.

The Story Challenge is supported by an $800,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The programme also has support from the African Development Bank and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra).

The finalists, in alphabetical order, are:

Johanna Absalom, Freelance, Namibia
Wade Adama, Financial Afrik, Senegal
Dayo Aiyetan , Daily Trust newspaper, Nigeria
Jonathan Akweteireho, Freelance, Uganda
Mabvuto Banda , Weekend Nation, Malawi
Joseph Burite, SMS Media, Uganda
Alex Chamwada, Citizen TV, Kenya
Elias Gebreselassie, newbusinessethiopia.com, Ethiopia
Anthony Kamba, New Nation Newspaper, South Sudan
Samuka Konneh, Liberia Media Center, Liberia
Kouassi Selay Marius, Abidjan Live News, Ivory Coast
Wisdom Mdzungairi, Newsday Daily Newspaper, Zimbabwe
Mustapha El Mehdi, El Watan, Algeria
Billy Muiruri, Nation Media Group, Kenya
Comfort Mussa, Freelance, Cameroon
Diana Neille, eNews Channel Africa, South Africa
Mildred Odongo, Freelance, Kenya
Bruno Sanogo, Freelance, Burkina Faso
Paul Monde Shalala, Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, Zambia
Nana Boakye Yiadom, Citi FM, Ghana

For more information or to request an interview, kindly contact:

Maimouna Jallow

Project Manager

Tel: + 254 788 279 091 / [email protected]

Joseph Warungu

Editor & Project Director

Tel: +254-722-708-370 / [email protected]

June 13, 2017

Keep it simple, change the world: Lessons from the Marrakech Story Camp

Blog by Business & Technology finalist Tosin Sulaiman

The advice was simple yet surprising: “Throw away great content.”

It was one of the many memorable tips I and the other African Story Challenge finalists received from mentors at the Business and Technology Story Camp in Morocco this summer. As experienced journalists about to embark on major projects, we thought we knew how to tell a good story, so being told to abandon some of our hard-won gems of information was the last thing we expected to hear. But throughout the week the mentors challenged many of our assumptions about journalism and by the end of the camp we were able to refine our PhD thesis-sized ideas into simpler stories that could make a difference to readers, listeners and viewers already deluged with content.

Heres what I learnt about how to produce stories that create an impact while avoiding the pitfalls of a large, ambitious journalism project:

Step 1: Avoid the curse of knowledge

Before we could begin planning our stories, many of us, myself included, needed to be liberated from the burden of knowing too much. We may have spent months researching our topics but that did not mean we had to dump it all on the reader, mentors told us repeatedly. As Mirko Lorenz, a pioneer of data journalism, put it, “throwing away good stuff in favour of better stuff is very hard work.” But if we weren’t prepared to make choices and cuts we would be trapped by too much material and too many options, he warned. A presentation by data visualisation expert Kristaps Silins also summed up the message well: “Trash 99% of your content – quality is a choice.”

Photo: Trainer Mirko Lorenz shares his invaluable insights

Step 2: Know your audience

As journalists, we often want our stories to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. But, as we learned at the story camp, this is not necessarily the right approach. Our stories are likely to have more of an impact if they are tailored to a narrow key audience, we were advised. Before putting pen to paper, we should ask ourselves: “Who are the people who will be interested in my findings? Who will care the most?” In short, it’s not only our cherished content we have to sacrifice, but also audiences.

Step 3: Think different

We were constantly encouraged to think about how we would differentiate our stories, for example through a multimedia approach and the use of data journalism tools. As journalists, we have more storytelling options than ever, from long form articles and explainers to infographics and soundslides (audio slideshows). The advice was to feed ourselves with many examples first and then select one or two technologies or approaches that would help our story stand out from everyone else’s. But, as we were reminded, while technology helps, we don’t need it to tell a good story.

Photo: Presenting my improved idea at Story Camp

Step 4: Change the world

If we had any doubts about our roles as journalists in the crowded and competitive digital era, those were gone by the final day of the story camp. To paraphrase Justin Arenstein, chief digital strategist at the African Media Initiative: If you don’t care whether your stories change the world, you’re wasting your time.

When producing stories, we should aim for a clear change in behavior, Justin told us. Audiences are not engaging with our content as they used to. They’re overwhelmed with too much content or they’ve got multiple sources of news outside of traditional media.

“We need to find new ways to make the news we’re writing as useful as possible in their lives. Reporting, just telling the story is no longer good enough,” he said. “We need to transform that news into actionable information. The only stories worth doing are those that address a real demand. It needs to address a real pain point and a real world challenge in these people’s lives.”

Photo: The Morocco Story Camp team. A great experience!

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017

Key Dates

Cycle 1: Agriculture and Food Security

26th May 2013: Competition opens for entries

30th June 2013: Competition closes to entries

8th July 2013: The 20 short-listed candidates will be informed

4th – 8th August 2013: Intensive training boot camp

12th August – 19th September 2013: Field production and post-production. All 20 shortlisted candidates will be given reporting grants following the boot camp and will have six weeks to produce and publish their stories

29th September 2013: Stories must be published or broadcast in your chosen media and a copy submitted for judging.

3rd – 17th October 2013: External judging process

18th October 2013: Three runners up will be informed

8th November 2013: Announcement of winner at African Media Leaders Forum (AMLF) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Cycle 2: Diseases: Prevention and Treatment

2nd September 2013: Competition opens for entries

24th November 2013: Competition closes for entries

3rd December 2013: 20 shortlisted candidates to be informed

19th – 24th January 2014: Intensive training boot camp

27th January – 7th March 2014: Field production and post-production. All 20 shortlisted candidates will be given reporting grants following the boot camp and will have six weeks to produce and Publish their stories

9th March 2014: Submission of stories for judging

17th March 2014 – 30th March 2014: External judging process

April 2014: Announcement of winners.

Cycle 3: Business and Technology

Applications are from 3rd March-16th May 2014