How open data and new technologies hold keys to the media’s future across Africa
The spread of mobile phones and connectivity across Africa offers opportunities and challenges for the way that information will be discovered and used by citizens. If people have the skills and knowledge to harness them, open data and new technologies hold the keys to the media’s future.
Code for Africa is the continent’s largest network of civic technology and open data labs. We work with media partners to create actionable information for citizens that help them in their daily lives. From checking if their doctor is dodgy to seeing if they are registered to vote, Code for Africa’s tools have been used in dozens of countries to help empower people.
How might technology be used in the coming years to further democratise the use of information and news across Africa? Our experts from Kenya and Nigeria set out their predictions:
Drone journalism in Africa
by Dickens Olewe, co-founder of African skyCAM
In November 2014, British filmmaker Danny Cooke shared online aerial footage of Pripyat, a city affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The footage of the desolate city shows close shots of empty buildings and abandoned toys littering a theme park frozen in time; all this captured by a DJI Phantom 2 (GoPro3+) which costs about $1500.
Drones have become a low-cost alternative to expensive helicopters when it comes to capturing aerial images. The agility of off-the-shelf copters means they can be deployed to cover intimate details of a story.
At African skyCAM we have covered several stories including floods, political rallies and marathons; we are also looking at emerging use cases like developing 3D models. We produced a 3D model of a dumpsite in Nairobi, giving users an interactive experience with a physical feature.
The biggest challenge to civic drone use is regulation. Several African governments have issued decrees banning civilian operation, arguing they pose a threat to security and privacy. The Kenyan government published a notice in January 2015 banning drone use, and Uganda and Morocco have similar ordinances.
However, South Africa’s approach could help reverse this copycat reaction to drone use. Like the other countries, it had banned drones: the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACCA) expressed concerns about drones interfering with commercial aircrafts but also acknowledged viable civic uses. SACCA promised to engage the industry and publish regulations after a year, which it did in May 2015 making South Africa one of the world’s leaders in progressive drone regulation. The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority has since indicated that it is considering reversing the ban.
To secure the future of drone journalism in Africa, there’s need to work together with other industries that have professional interest in using the technology, and together lobby for friendly regulation.
Media freedoms in Kenya
by Catherine Gicheru, ICFJ Knight international journalism fellow at Code for Kenya
Computers, the internet and mobile phones continue to change the way the world works, plays and communicates. In Kenya, computer ownership and usage has grown relatively slowly with more people likely to use computers than to own them. There has been an exponential growth in ownership of mobile phones to 88.1% penetration as of September 2015. There are also 21.6 million internet subscriptions which implies that 74.2% of Kenyans now have access to internet services.
The advance of new media and technology has changed the way journalists work as well as how information is obtained and produced. The business of news is now more of a dialogue between the news providers and the receivers of information. Citizens now have much greater control over how and when they receive information, and can react to it and participate in it if they choose. Audience involvement, either through use of cellphones or through social media, has fostered a culture where more people come to value press freedom more broadly. The anonymity offered by these platforms means that ideas and information can be shared widely and faster with a large number of people, but these same innovations have created opportunities for widespread manipulation of information which is difficult to stem.
These technologies have also also introduced new threats to media freedom. The mobile companies are obliged to give up cell phone records when ordered by the courts, presenting journalists with the challenge of keeping their sources secret. The introduction of the Security Laws Amendment Act 2014, which weakens safeguards and widens the scope and powers of the police and undefined ‘national security organs’ to surveil and intercept communications, restricts the media freedom space. As importantly, it also restricts the ability of citizens to point out and demand action on government failures. That is where whistleblowing platforms like Code for Africa’s Afrileaks come into play, as they provide citizens and journalists alike a platform where they can share information on stories and tips.
Digital technologies have provided journalists with opportunities to be innovative, ethical, inclusive, and to work in collaborative ways to solve problems and improve people’s lives. An example is the GotToVote platform which not only provides citizens with information on elections which was previously not easily accessible, but also gives journalists information which adds nuance and depth to their reporting. These tools will become even more crucial in future as not many journalists have the skills to analyse, synthesise and interpret the vast array of statistical information being made available on the internet.
Fighting for good healthcare in Nigeria
by Temi Adeoye, ICFJ Knight international journalism fellow at Code for Nigeria
The desperate need for affordable healthcare in Nigeria’s poorly funded, understaffed, and ill-equipped health sector has driven many - especially the poor and vulnerable - into the hands of persons not qualified to treat them. Quacks. The impact of quackery is very difficult to measure, but nonetheless extremely severe. Its cost is in human terms, measured in agonising disillusionment, temporary or permanent deformation, complication of existing ailments, and in some cases, needless deaths.
Contrary to popular opinion, public medical institutions are not more insulated from this cancer. The complicity and culpable negligence of recruiters at public health service commissions paves the way for quacks to infiltrate the system. It is a major headache for health regulatory authorities in Nigeria. As the Director of Inspectorate at the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) says, “They are evil geniuses, very elusive, and difficult to catch”. The MDCN has over 40 cases against accused quacks in several courts across the country but convictions are rare.
As the authorities continue to struggle and the judiciary continues to fail, vulnerable citizens continue to die. Code for Nigeria has therefore partnered with West Africa’s largest online news outfit, Sahara Reporters, to deploy a data-driven tool called Dodgy Doctors to empower citizens to fight quackery from the comfort of their computers and mobiles.
The Dodgy Doctors app is one of a set of tools in the SaharaHealth initiative that uses official MDCN data to help citizens quickly and easily check whether their doctor is properly registered. All they need to do is type a doctor’s name in and the service cross-checks it with the MDCN’s master register.
Other apps in the suite include Hospital Finder and Medicine Prices. The Hospital Finder app is a geo-located service that helps citizens reduce the critical time it takes to locate health facilities around them. The Medicine Prices app helps citizens check how much the government expects them to pay for medicines.
Data-driven tools like SaharaHealth are changing how media affects our lives. It is no longer sufficient to talk about what is wrong in our world: the media should give citizens simple, actionable and easy-to-use tools to solve their own problems.
Stephen Abbott Pugh is an ICFJ Knight international journalism fellow working with Code for Africa. He works on audience engagement for projects across Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania.
This article is an adaptation of a piece that originally appeared in a special edition of the African Free Press, a Media Institute of Southern Africa project supported by DW Akademie, published to mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Windhoek Declaration. It was originally published online at whk25.misa.org under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
