The 7 African projects that are embracing AI and data journalism
I was in Windhoek last week and there is a lot to be optimistic about...
Last week I went to Windhoek to help facilitate seven teams from across Africa to take their AI and data media projects from concept to prototype. It was my first time in Windhoek and I found it charming and peaceful (and even managed to go to a garish Oktoberfest in Namibia celebration where a bunch of Americans were gleefully, drunkenly and competitively hitting nails into wood).
On the final day the teams pitched their ideas to a jury of experts. They were varied and brilliant. Election maps, AI chatbots, African language translation initiatives… all with an eye towards enhancing media in Africa (while also making some money).
The Innovation Lab 2023 is a truly remarkable initiative, run by Peter Deselaers, DW Akademie Program Director for Namibia & Southern Africa. Here is what the teams have in the works:
June Shimuoshili, a journalist, and Amanda Munal, an IT Technician, from The Namibian, an established daily independent daily that has been around since 1985, want to solve the engagement problem they have with their readers. They have realised that an AI chatbot could be more responsive than their staff to readers’ questions… and hopefully they’ll get the bot to correspond in Oshiwambo (a local Namibian language). On that, Axel Mukwena runs Meyabase (in his spare time) which is all over trying to solve for African language translation.
Next, Mallick Mnela and Mary Kadewere from iHubOnline in Malawi are a true power team in using and building new AI tools. They are focusing on using AI to interrogate government budget documents (which are hard to understand for most) and making them accessible to all.
When I started going to innovation type labs back in 2015 with Citizen Justice Network (which was formed at Wits University) we were pitching the pairing of community paralegals with community radio stations to produce more justice content for millions of listeners. There was impact, but no tech (besides radio) and certainly no coding.
This blend of tech and the personal is prominent in the project from Bloggers of Zambia. Richard Mulonga and Numeral Daka are going after revolutionising fact-checking. We sat for long sessions during the week discussing how to best tackle the problem of disinformation. They are combining tech and an on-the ground network of citizens who can help verify bits of dubious information. I genuinely think this could be a game changer.
Zimbabwe is in trouble. Tanaka Mrewa from the Center for Innovation and Technology (CITE) regaled us over lunch with tales about the inflation and media oppression happening in her country, but also how the gap is wide open for extreme innovation. Along with her colleague Sean Ndlovu they are proposing an exciting shift to making their content searchable through an AI chatbot (using the Perplexity API) and monetising it with a paywall.
Joel Konopo and Keneilwe Pono Lephoi from the INK Center for Investigative Journalism in Botswana are passionate about reversing voter apathy. Joel is intense when it comes to getting better election data in the hands of journalists so they can produce inspiring stories. They are developing a data project to make this a reality.
Lesotho was represented by Billy Ntaote and Retselisitsoe Khabo from the MNN Center for Investigative Reporting. They are perfectly placed to produce their crime map, because they have the experience of investigative journalists so they can find the data necessary AND they have the skills in tech to display it perfectly. The methods they used to extract the crime data for their map were thorough and the map (when it shows reliable crime information for the country) is going to provide a real service.
Finally, Vitus-Gregory Gondwe from PIJ and Daniel Mvalo from mHub in Malawi are using AI to make investigative journalism more accessible to readers. They are an inspiring team - a true combination of an experienced investigative journalist and a young tech expert pooling their resources to make media better.
I will be following up with these teams in this newsletter as they progress with their projects.
This week’s AI tool for journalists to use…
The future is chat. And advertising is still around. So, this is pretty interesting: a platform that builds you customised adverts for your chatbot.
A quick retraction: I slagged off Adobe’s Enhance Speech tool a few weeks ago (it is meant to turn dodgy voice over recordings into studio quality) and I have since discovered that it does work, but only on the paid tier. If you are paying then you can adjust the strength of the enhancement and then if you make it less extreme the results sound more human.
Coding Corner (the gradual process of a journalist learning how to code)
I am busy building a more friendly user interface for the podcast creation tool (so it can be opened up for general use). The service is Streamlit and it allows you to take your old Colab script and package it into a shareable web app. I will report back on how I get on.
What AI was used in creating this newsletter?
Besides the picture above, none at all.
In the news…
The Image Wars have begun. Meta is making moves around introducing invisible watermarks and a gloriously disruptive tool allows you to “poison” your art so if it’s scraped into an AI training set it causes total chaos for the model.
It was announced yesterday that Biden will regulate AI models (if they threaten national security). It’s going to mean a lot of data sharing going forward with the US government.
What’s new at Develop AI? We were featured in Podnews, I did a radio interview on Power FM and participated in a full week of conferences
I am speaking today at Bloomberg’s Africa Business Media Innovators 2023 conference. I’ll be with the incredible Paula Fray talking about “Building a Data-Driven and Technology Focused Newsroom”.
A huge thanks to Podnews and James Cridland for featuring Develop AI and our adventures in automating podcasts as their top story on the 17th of October.
I was very happy to chat to Lerato at Power FM about AI newsreaders (and assure her that her job is safe).
Two weeks ago I presented at Jamfest (on AI strategies for newsrooms) and The Media Freedom Festival (on the future of news with regards to AI). Thanks for the invites, all the great chats and everyone for attending.
Plenty of new people have found us recently and signed up to this newsletter and joined our WhatsApp Community. Please consider joining if you haven’t already. Great to have all these new people!
See you next week. All the best,
Join our WhatsApp Community, listen to our AI generated podcast, visit our website, or contact us on X, Threads, LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok (thanks Stefanie Duckstein). Physically we are based in Cape Town, South Africa.
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