Hacking African Migration: Changing the narrative, one prototype at a time
From 5–7 April, GEN hosted the first Editors Lab of 2019 and the first one in Côte d’Ivoire, with the theme “African Migration Reporting”. During the hackathon, the teams were invited to take part of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s flagship event, the Ibrahim Governance Weekend (IGW), which gathers prominent African political and business leaders, representatives from civil societies and Africa’s international partners.
On Day 1, the eight participating teams of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Editors Lab faced the challenge of hacking African migration, how can newsrooms better understand and serve the needs of reporting about African migration, and how can the latest technology help to shape the narrative? Starting with arriving at the venue of the IGW, the teams got to know each other through speed geeking — presenting a project by their newsroom they are proud to share with the rest of the teams.
Every Editors Lab team consisted of a journalist, a developer, and a designer, and the eight participating teams were from coming from Nigeria, Senegal, Burundi, DR Congo, and Côte d’Ivoire. After getting to know each other, the first brainstorming session started. What did the teams wanted to change in the narrative of African migration — fighting misinformation, strenghtening community engagement, sharing information about Africa?
To get inspired, Adebola Williams, CEO of REDAfrica, which owns Africa’s largest portfolio of youth media brands that engages millions of youths on the continent, and a pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy, and technology, held a workshop about what it means to change how we talk about African migration.
Next up was Jean-Patrick Ehouman, entrepreneur and winner of the UNESCO Prize for Youth Entrepreneurship & Culture of Peace in Africa, who hosted a short “How to Pitch” workshop during the Editors Lab. For many teams, it was the first time participating in a hackathon, so this particular format and experience was very new to them, as was having to pitch their ideas and prototype to a jury.
Day 1 ended with attending the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Leadership Ceremony celebrating and paying tribute to Kofi Annan, who spent most of his life working towards peace, democracy, and development.
After an intense brainstorming session on Day 1, the next day started with getting even more food for thought: The teams participated in the Ibrahim Governance Weekend with lots of high-level discussions which tackled the challenges Africa are facing and sets out priorities for action. This flagship event is held every year in a different African country with a different topic each year: The 2019 Forum focused on African migration.
For the rest of Day 2, the teams continued working on their prototypes.
Day 3 was action-packed. Not only was it the last hacking sprint for the teams, but it was time to pitch!
- Abidjan.net created I-News, a mobile app to inform youth between the ages 18 and 25 about the topic of illegal migrations.
- Africa Check from Senegal built Africa Migrants, a platform to aggregate official statistics and accurate data, making them easily accessible to users. By sharing information about who the migrants are and where they come from, they hope to address misperceptions about African migration.
- The student team ESMA, from the École des Specialités Multimédia d’Abidjan, developed Africa Development, a website to share data and testimonials to encourage the African diaspora youth to return to their countries and invest in the continent.
- The team from RD Congo, Habari RDC, created a plug-in called Migrator, which can be installed on websites in order to direct users to other pages where they can get more accurate data about African migration.
- Ivoiresoir developed Point Focal, a website addressing the lack of work security in Côte d’Ivoire. A questionnaire would be put forward to Ivorians to identify their challenges and help direct public policies for more work security.
- A Migration Dictionary is L’Expression’s project. By clicking on a letter or number people can access data and research about African Migrations. The website can be updated by users themselves.
- Sahara Reporters, the team from Nigeria, created Africana, which is designed to help fight the myth and misinformation of African migration. Through the Africana website, stories of African migrant achievement will be sourced for partner newsrooms.
- Yaga Burundi, the team from Burundi, built an interactive, infographfic-based information app called Immigrer.Africa, which includes data, testimonials from migrants, and media articles in order to correct narratives and make information about African Migrations more accessible to the public.
And the winners are… Sahara Reporters! They scored the highest with their prototype Africana, and the special mentions of the hackathon are Africa Check with Africa Migrants and ESMA with Africa Development.
All teams presented very creative and strong prototypes, especially because it was a very new experience for most of the teams, and it was new for them to work cross-disciplinary and under pressure. The pitching session was fun, exciting, and innovative.
The hope is that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Editors Lab hackathon with its prototypes will add a small contribution to changing the narrative about African migration in a positive direction. The prototypes made by the journalists, developers, and designers involved in Abidjan were all very interesting and full of innovative content, and this experience for the teams will hopefully encourage them to continue with a conversation beyond the three days.
Read an interview with the winners, Sahara Reporters and Adebola Williams here.
