Are you passionate about combating misinformation across Africa?
Code for Africa (CfA) is seeking experienced Fact-Checkers to join our PesaCheck team. We have immediate openings for full-time positions based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in journalistic or investigative research experience and excellent writing skills. Bilingual applicants will have an advantage.
PesaCheck is the continent’s largest indigenous fact-checking initiative by geographic coverage, with teams in 18 African countries. It researches and debunks misinformation published both online and elsewhere in more traditional media, publishing over 2,000 fact-checks per year, in partnership with major platforms ranging from Facebook and TikTok, to traditional media. PesaCheck also tracks promises by public officials and shines a light on public finances to ensure the public is not misled. PesaCheck forms part of Code for Africa (CfA), which is Africa’s largest non-profit digital/data journalism initiative.
The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create content for a global audience and international media partners.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- 3+ years of proven experience in journalism or research, preferably on a fact-checking desk
- Excellent research, numeracy, and analytical skills to break down complex issues for all audiences
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to manage high work volumes within tight deadlines while maintaining consistency and accuracy
- Strong news literacy, critical thinking skills, and a keen sense of accuracy and truth
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Experience in transnational multilingual digital newsrooms
- Understanding of fact-checking, disinformation, and digital tools for fact-checking
- Familiarity with mining and handling large datasets
- Strong decision-making and exceptional presentation skills
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania.
- Languages: Amharic, English, Hausa, Igbo, Kiswahili, Pidgin, Ssesotho,Tigrinya, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu
- Preferred but not required: Arabic, French, Portuguese
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s transnational fact-checking team working as part of a network of locally-based fact-checkers in 18 African countries. The team is responsible for helping the public separate fact from fiction, using a range of journalistic techniques and digital verification tools.
Your core duty is to produce fact checks and investigate questionable content on social media, on mainstream media and utterances/claims by public figures. You will also, from time to time, collaborate with PesaCheck media partners and/or Code for Africa’s digital innovation teams on other special projects.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Proactively monitor various local/regional public sources, from mainstream media to social media and chat apps, to detect misleading or malign content, such as hate speech.
- Analyse public statements/manuscripts for factual errors, logical flaws, and significant omissions to determine their classification as misinformation or another form of misleading content.
- Examining the sources mentioned in selected public statements/manuscripts and, where necessary, identifying additional documents and/or sources to help determine whether PesaCheck should classify the content as misinformation or as another form of misleading or malign content.
- Producing ‘explainer articles’ that outline why a specific public statement/manuscript has been classified as misinformation or another form of malign content. Your articles will be based on substantive desktop research and interviews, accurately distilling relevant information into explanations that are easily understandable by ‘ordinary’ audiences, and that are substantiated by tangible evidence.
What We Offer:
- A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
- Medical insurance cover, underwritten by a remote-first provider to ensure cover wherever you are
- A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
- Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry.
- A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form by April 30, 2024. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 100 staff in 21 countries, who build digital democracy solutions that are intended to give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and largest open source civic software portal, commons.AFRICA, as well as the largest repository of investigative document-based evidence, source.AFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network that gives citizens their own ‘eyes in the sky’, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in 12 African countries, and the sensors.AFRICA remote-sensing citizen science initiative to combat air/water pollution.
CfA also incubates the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), as an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept differences – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our employment application line, CfA employees or any other CfA contact. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.