The Solutions Journalism Network’s Africa Initiative has named its inaugural set of 10 Fellows who will implement solutions journalism-focused projects across Kenya and Nigeria.
The Fellows who were unveiled on Monday by Ruona Meyer, Africa Initiative Manager of the Network comprises journalism lecturers, artists, as well as veteran and investigative reporters who will deliver their projects in various African languages and in formats including digital theatre, educational curriculum, and investigative radio.
The five Nigerian Fellows are journalists, Zainab Sanni, who will set up a solutions journalism investigative radio desk at Agdigbo 88.7FM, Seun Durojaiye will pioneer solutions journalism training in Nigeria’s official languages, Lekan Otufodunrin will build and run the Solutions Journalism West Africa Hub; Abdulkareem Mojeed of Premium Times newspaper will report on Climate Change Solutions for Agriculture and Jamiu Folarin, a lecturer at Crescent University, Abeokuta, whose curriculum development project is Mainstreaming Solutions Journalism in Ogun state.
Their five Kenyan counterparts are journalists Edith Magak, who is working with people living with disabilities to showcase community-based solutions; Christopher Omondi, who will work on a series of radio reports on how motorcycle riders are curing the spread of COVID-19; Angela Oketch’s project will cover the solutions HIV-positive families have come up with to suppress the virus; Brian Malika will train young people under 24 to report on climate change solutions in rural communities and filmmaker Rey Bulambo, whose project uses digital theatre to highlight the solutions created by community members living in a camp for displaced persons.
The Fellows will pioneer a community of content creators and platforms that enhance solutions journalism for Africa, by Africans running till November.
While welcoming the new fellows, David Bornstein, one of the Co-founders of the Solutions Journalism Network said the organization is thrilled about the fellowship and the reporting to be done.
“We are excited to welcome you to this network. We hope that once you are in it, you will see that there are many peers and friends that you will be making. And we’ll all be learning from each other about journalism, and hopefully building a better news ecosystem, to move us out of the direction of fear and more in the direction of hope; credible hope, or ‘hope with teeth,’ is how we put it,” he said.
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Programme Manager of Health Watch Nigeria, Betty Baiye congratulated the Fellows and assured them that her organisation would support them with mentorship and other resources to ensure the success of their projects.
Noting that efforts to spread solutions journalism in Kenya have been ongoing for over three years, Science Africa Founder and Managing Editor Otula Owuor said the Fellows were very welcomed to be part of the core team to entrench solutions journalism across the continent.
The Solutions Journalism Network is a non-profit organisation with a presence across 18 countries and over 500 newsrooms.
The Fellowship is part of the Solution Journalism Network’s Africa Initiative, in which 60 newsrooms and 30 Fellows across Nigeria and Kenya will receive training and funding, over a three-year period.
The Solutions Journalism Network is a non-profit organisation with a presence across 18 countries and over 500 newsrooms.
