Are you an African journalist interested in strengthening your capacity to conduct open-source investigations?

Code for Africa (CfA) is offering six African Academy for Open Source Investigation (AAOSI) Fellowships to mentor journalists in select African countries.

The programme aims to foster stronger democratic accountability, strengthen digital resilience and security of pro-democracy civil society actors, safeguard the use of digital technologies and online spaces, and enhance youth voices and youth civic engagement in a secure digital space. It will do this by equipping journalists from investigative media organisations and watchdog non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with open-source intelligence (OSINT) and social media intelligence (SOCMINT) forensic analysis skills to produce evidence-driven analyses.

The fellowship will further enhance information integrity in the target countries by tackling information manipulation and interference (IMI), coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB), disinformation campaigns, hate speech, online harassment, propaganda, and the weaponisation of artificial intelligence (AI) to pollute information ecosystems.

Applications are welcome from journalists in the following regions/countries:

1. The Sahel region: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Senegal.
2. West Africa: Benin, Cameroon, Guinea, and Togo.
3. East Africa: Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan.

The AAOSI is a joint initiative between CfA’s CivicSignal AI/machine-learning team, the iLAB forensic research team, and the PesaCheck fact-checking team.

Our goals for AAOSI Fellowships are to:

1. Equip investigative media and watchdog civil society organisations with open-source intelligence (OSINT) skills and tools to turbocharge their investigations into information manipulation.
2. Build a strong pan-African network of OSINT investigators who can collaborate on transnational investigations with peers worldwide to unmask influence operations and information manipulation.
3. Help newsrooms reach larger audiences and build deeper engagement with the public for data-driven discussions on key issues.

The fellowship programme

Fellows will be expected to apply their training to real-world challenges by actively countering disinformation, exposing harmful narratives, and enhancing digital security measures within their respective contexts.

The first cohort of the programme will span four months in 2025, and will consist of:

1. Financial support: The chosen journalists will receive a monthly stipend to cover related activities and costs.
2. Technical support: CfA will offer hands-on technical training, followed by one-on-one project mentorship and support from CfA’s data technologists, data analysts, multimedia producers, and editors. 
3. Publishing support: The journalists will publish content generated under the project on their respective media platforms and will receive support to publish internationally. 
4. Growing reach: CfA will offer amplification and growth support, including scaling/syndication support for the affiliated organisations.

Each participant will be required to produce two evidence-driven reports on the highlighted issues during the fellowship period.

Still interested? Check if you are eligible. 

Candidates must:

1. Be based in one of the target African countries. 
2. Have a minimum of one year of experience in journalism, with a strong preference for investigative or data journalism.
3. Provide evidence of reports produced and recently published.
4. Be attached or affiliated to a media house, digital news outlet, or a relevant organisation where content produced during the project will be published. This also applies to freelance journalists.
5. Commit to publishing/disseminating their work on an appropriate public platform. CfA will assist with partnerships and syndications where appropriate.
6. Commit to agreed-on weekly online training and mentorship sessions.
7. Willing to share their new skills and knowledge within their organisation, by presenting their projects and techniques to their peers.
8. Be fluent in either of the languages of tuition and mentorship (English or French).

If you are eligible, please apply no later than Sunday, 25 May 2025, by completing this form. Women and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Questions? Reach out to mitchelle.awuor@codeforafrica.org or @kunle.adebajo@codeforafrica.org.

Please note: Due to the high volume of applications, we are unable to respond to each one individually. If you are shortlisted or selected for an interview, we will contact you.

---

About the partners:

Code for Africa is Africa’s largest civic technology and open data incubator. We support digital democracy and investigative data journalism initiatives as part of our mission to give citizens access to actionable information and to amplify citizen voices to make society more responsive and accountable. CfA’s mission is to leverage technology and data to foster digital democracies and empower citizens by providing actionable information. 

The African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) is the only continent-wide research coalition focused on understanding how disinformation and influence or information operations are being used to subvert African democracies or watchdog institutions. The initiative is member-driven, consisting of 15 organisations that run substantive Africa-focused analytical research or investigations. Find out more about ADDO’s activities and members here. 

The European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) is a network with a global remit to support democracy. In 2008, several organisations came together to create EPD as a partnership to reinforce European democracy support by building a community that advocates and acts for democratic values around the world. 

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.