GOOGLE has announced its plans
towards a Digital Journalism initiative
that will see 6,000 African journalists
trained in data journalism skills by the
end of February 2018.

Google News Lab and the World Bank
are working with Code For Africa to
empower journalists in Africa by giving
them the necessary support to better
understand the Web and how to use the
tools available to them online.

The Code For Africa Digital Journalism
initiative will take place over the next
9 months (to February 2018) and see
6 000 journalists trained in 12 major
African cities – Abuja, Lagos, Nairobi,
Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban,
Casablanca, Dakar, Freetown, Dar es
Salaam, Kampala, and Yaounde.
Code For Africa is a data journalism
and civic technology initiative operating
across Africa that trains and supports
journalists and civic activists to better understand and use web tools for news reporting and storytelling. Training will take place in three formats.

Beginning June 15, in-person training
sessions will be held in the cities
mentioned above. In each city, we will
conduct training in 3 newsrooms and
training will be held twice a month for the
duration of the initiative.
Beginning August, a massive open
online course (MOOC) will be made freely
available online, covering a range of web
concepts and practices for digital journalists.

We will also hold monthly study group
meetups in collaboration with Hacks/
Hackers to provide more focused, inperson
instruction. Monthly meetings will
take place in Cameroon, Kenya, Morocco,
Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South
Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Commenting on the initiative, Daniel
Sieberg, Head of Training & Development
at Google News Lab said: “The web and
digital tools present an interesting array
of options for journalists, but learning
how to use these tools can be a daunting task for many media people. While theglobal news industry faces a knowledge
challenge with regards to digital tools,
Africa, by virtue of its non-digital
education systems, faces even greater
odds in the battle for digital integration
in news and storytelling.

In Nigeria for instance, only a few of
the journalism institutions offer training
programs that focus on Web tools,
and many top news organisations lose
out on stories due to their inability to
utilise newer and more engaging digital
techniques.”

In 2016, Google announced its
commitment to train one million
African youth within one year to help
them create and find jobs via the Web.
“With the Digital Journalism initiative
we want to contribute to the growth of
Africa’s news and media ecosystem by
training present and future practitioners
on how to employ existing tools to tell
stories, and support them to create
locally- relevant tools that will reshape
how Africans consume news,” he
added.