The Africa Centre for Development Journalism (ACDJ) is now accepting entries from eligible Nigerian journalists for its inaugural Development Reporting Awards aimed at sub-national development reports that emphasize inequality, underdevelopment, policy, and governance.
The Development Report Awards is an activity under ACDJ’s Sub-national Development Data Accountability, Reporting Project focused on inequality, underdevelopment, policy and governance. The project is part of a Collaborative Media Partnership Supported by the MacArthur Foundation through the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.
For a report to be eligible it must have been published or broadcast either online, in print, or through electronic (TV and radio) media from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022 with emphasis on the Sub-National Level (States & Local Governments).
For the journalists’ category, entries should include: A maximum of one entry, with emphasis on a development issue at the sub-national level (States & Local Governments) in Nigeria; original work of the individual or team identified in the entry application as the author(s) first published or broadcast from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022.
Themes covered by each entry should include childhood/youth, economic status, education/skills, energy, food & nutrition, gender, health, housing, injustice/status before the law, people living with disability, political/representation, reproductive health, social status, water, sanitation & hygiene, and must be geared towards discussing the causes of sub-national underdevelopment in Nigeria based on multiple inequalities.
The public presentation of the awards will be held at an event as part of the activities commemorating the 2022 Development Information Day observed by the United Nations (UN).
A final shortlist of the award recipients will be announced before the public presentation.
Three individual modest cash prizes for outstanding reporting on development issues will be presented to three journalists (winner, first runner-up and second runner-up) while institutional recognition will be given to media organizations across various media specialties for outstanding coverage of development issues.
All submitted entries must be in English Language, any entry done in a local Nigerian language must be submitted with an English transcription for consideration, and applicants with multiple entries will not be qualified. An entry could either be a single or series report.
Print entries should be accompanied by a summary not exceeding 450 words with explanation on the main points of the story; it must give a narrative description/background information of the report(s); highlight the salient human-interest and development/inequality issues, the actors, the intervention point(s)/outcome of the story (if any) and any challenges faced during reporting if not included in the report; a clean and clear original print copy of the entry revealing the date of publication must be scanned and uploaded in PDF format (not exceeding 100MB) through the submission form; and every submitted print entry apart from the scanned version must be accompanied by the e-paper version of the report(s).
TV/Radio entries must be accompanied by sufficient evidence that shows the report was broadcast in the media organization as claimed; and a cue in before and cue out after the report done by the person introducing the report during a TV or radio broadcast.
The entry report(s) is/are expected to be web link(s) of the story as published by the organization, where this is not available, the entry audio or video file should be uploaded on Sound cloud for radio or YouTube for TV with the appropriate web link supplied in the submission form (This is applicable to online entries as well).
Application closes on October 1, 2022 by 11:59 pm, West African Time (WAT) and should be submitted to awards@developmentjournalism.info.
