Journalists working in South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria are eligible to apply for the impactAFRICA reporting contest seeking stories that shed light on the challenges women and girls face in accessing health-care and health services as well as those that proffer solutions to improving the quality of life for them and their families.
The winner of the contest will get a 10-day fully paid study tour to major United States newsrooms as part of a new.
The contest is open to journalists, who have published, broadcast or produced impactful stories on any platform and in any medium in at least one of the target countries between November 15, 2016 and March 15, 2017. The best submissions should showcase solutions and offer evidence that the reportage has had a positive impact on policies or services.
Winners will be chosen from three categories: best community impact; best audience engagement; and best use of data.
According to Justin Arenstein, Director of Code for Africa, “All impactAFRICA winners help shine a light on blind spots in our societies, using digital and data journalism to help expose under-reported issues in ways that give people information they can use to make better informed decisions,” adding “Our aim is to support journalism that engages and empowers people”.
Holding the view that gender inequality is not just an abstract issue, impactAFRICA believes that it directly impacts the health and lives of women and girls across the continent, as well as societies and communities.
To buttress this position, it cited three reports: a UNWomen report showing that 8 in 10 of all new HIV patients are women; a UNICEF report that says girls across Africa still suffer from a lack of proper sanitation at schools, contributing to a higher dropout rate than amongst boys; and a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation report that says a lack of family planning contributes to preventable deaths of women and to keeping a family in poverty.
impactAFRICA is the continent’s largest fund for data-driven investigative storytelling, offering $500,000 in cash grants and technology support, along with editorial mentorship, across a series of funding rounds for pioneering journalism that uses data or digital tools to tackle development issues such as public healthcare, water, sanitation, the effects of air and water pollution on African communities, climate change and its effects on farming communities and food baskets, and other development issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The Challenges of Women in Africa contest is the second topic-specific impactAFRICA competition. The first contest, which closed on July 15 2016, focused on water and sanitation issues.
The competition is being organised by impactAFRICA, the continent’s largest fund for data-driven investigative storytelling.
For more information visit: http://impactafrica.fund/news/2016/african-data-journalism-fund-launches-new-contest-for-stories-on-gender-equality-and-the-challenges-women-face-in-accessing-health-care-and-services
