Are you up for the challenge of investigating how our media watchdogs get subverted by foreign nation states and their agents?
Code for Africa (CfA) is recruiting investigative researchers to dig into how foreign governments and their agents influence media policy and reportage.
Code for Africa (CfA) has immediate vacancies for 2 part-time research fellowships in Côte D’ivoire and Senegal.
Candidates must have an understanding of media and an investigative background either in journalism or the social sciences, including related fields such as due diligence or political economy analysis. French is essential for the position and the ability to work and write in English.
The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create a report for a global audience and international media partners.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Strong research skills with ability to analyse media content and track media actors across platforms
- Experience in data collection and documentation using collaborative digital tools
- Background in journalism, media studies, or social science with an understanding of media independence
- Advanced internet investigation techniques and open-source intelligence gathering
- Familiarity with West African media landscapes
- Fluency in French (reading and writing)
- Fluency in English (speaking, reading and writing)
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Experience with CivicSignal’s MediaCloud or comparable media monitoring platforms
- Experience with content analysis methodologies
- Previous work on media integrity or influence operations in West Africa
- Data scraping and analysis capabilities
- Professional writing experience
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Remote with preference for candidates based in West Africa
- French and English (required)
- Preferred but not required: Local languages such as Wolof or Dioula
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join the CivicSignal team. CivicSignal is CfA’s in-house media monitoring and analysis unit that uses AI and other machine-learning approaches to map the information ecosystems across 27 African countries so that stakeholders, including development agencies, better understand the local media economies and media ownership.
You will join a team of researchers investigating media and media influence operations in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. Working remotely, you’ll collect evidence of state-funded media activities, track content republishing patterns, and document connections between journalists, pundits and foreign states.
The role involves analysing media content, mapping influence networks, and contributing to comprehensive case studies that illustrate manipulation tactics.
This position offers an opportunity to contribute to vital work protecting media integrity in West Africa while developing expertise in digital investigation techniques.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form: https://bit.ly/4kBaAes by 27 April 2025
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 120 staff in 26 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.
Please note: Due to high volumes of applications, we are unable to respond to each one individually. If you are selected for an interview, we will contact you.