impactAFRICA offers incentives that include cash prizes, mentoring, tech support as well as syndication support
impactAFRICA is offering $500,000 in support for finalists and winners.
For round one, the support consists of more than just cash prizes. impactAFRICA will offer support from Code for Africa’s software labs in all six participating countries, to help finalists build digital/mobile prototypes of their projects. Finalists will also get access to data analysts and design experts to help them transform their projects into dynamic interactive multimedia stories.
Finalists will be flown to the pan-African MediaParty in Cape Town in May 2016, for an intensive StoryCamp to help showshop their projects.
An independent impactAFRICA jury will then evaluate all finalist projects, and will award cash prizes in the following categories:
Both the journalists and their newsrooms will receive cash prizes.
impactAFRICA will also work with the winners of round one to syndicate their work internationally or otherwise promote their reportage to help them win the largest possible audiences. Selected winners will also be sponsored to showcase their work at international media events.
For round two, journalists who submit reportage on water and sanitation issues in six African countries can win fully-funded study trips to major newsrooms in the United States as part of a new contest by impactAFRICA.
An independent international jury will select the best report in each of three categories as winners. The categories are:
The three winning journalists will get to spend 10 days visiting and learning from some of the world’s top media outlets from three cities in the U.S.A. impactAFRICA is the continent’s largest fund for data-driven storytelling and is offering $500,000 in support through a series of contests this year to help boost digital journalism across the continent.
Any reportage on water or sanitation issues in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania or Zambia is eligible. Stories can be on any platform and in any format, as long as they are published or broadcast in the target countries during the period March 30 to June 30, 2016.