Judges
The Jury
The African News Innovation Challenge seeks to support worldclass digital innovation in the African media. The jury and advisory council are both therefore deliberately international in composition, and include some of the world’s leading digital news pioneers, innovation strategists and journalism thought-leaders.
Judges
| Trevor Ncube | President of the Jury | African Media Initiative |
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Trevor Ncube is co-chairperson of the organisation that manages ANIC, the African Media Initiative (AMI). Ncube started his career in Zimbabwe as a journalist and editor, before becoming a media owner. He is currently the controlling shareholder of the continent’s original Internet news pioneer, the investigative Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa, and is also co-founder and chairperson of Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), which publishes the NewsDay, The Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard newspapers in Zimbabwe. Ncube has served on the boards of various media industry bodies, including the international Institute for War & Peace Reporting (2004-8), the World Association of Newspapers (2004-8), and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (2004-7). His awards include a Print Media South Africa Fellowship (2006), the International Publishers Association Freedom Prize Award (2007), the German Africa Award (2008), and a 2010 Nation Media Group Life Achievement Award for his work in media on the continent. | |
| Peter Barron | ||
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Peter Barron has been Google’s director of external relations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa since January 2011. He joined Google in 2008 and was previously director of Google’s communications and public affairs for north and central Europe. Before joining Google, Barron was editor of BBC 2’s Newsnight programme from 2004-2008 and worked in TV News and Current Affairs for nearly twenty years. He has also been deputy editor at Channel 4 News and ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’ and devised and edited the BBC Current Affairs drama-documentary series ‘If…’. In 2007 he was advisory chair of the Edinburgh International TV Festival. | |
| Malik Fal | Omidyar Network | |
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Malik Fal is Omidyar Network’s managing director for Africa, where he leads the philanthropic fund’s drive to increase investments on the continent. Prior to joining Omidyar, Fal most recently was managing director of Endeavor South Africa where he led the rollout of Excelerator, an initiative to expand the diversity of high-impact South African entrepreneurs accepted into Endeavor. Prior to Endeavor, Malik held leadership roles at Microsoft and PepsiCo and served as a Monitor Group consultant to the World Bank, the Bermudan tourism industry and the Rwandan presidency. Born in Cote d’Ivoire, Fal holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. | |
| Mayur Patel | Knight Foundation | |
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Mayur Patel joined Knight Foundation in 2009. As vice president of strategy and assessment, he is responsible for aiding ongoing strategy development, strengthening research and knowledge management capabilities and assessing the impact and effectiveness of the foundation’s efforts. Mayur was previously a project associate with the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of Oxford, involved in research on international institutions and economic affairs, and a fellow with the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He has served as a consultant to Oxfam‘s offices in Kenya and the UK, and as a trade and investment policy adviser to Realizing Rights, an NGO based in New York. He has previously worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Zimbabwe, his home country, on issues of civic engagement and parliamentary support. A Rhodes Scholar, Mayur has a doctorate in international development from the University of Oxford, from which he also earned a master’s degree. Prior to attending Oxford, he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics (LSE). He is a Junior Fellow with the EVA Business and Policy Forum based in Helsinki, a recipient of aGoldman Sachs Global Leaders Award, a 2011 Independent Sector American Express NGEN Fellow and named as one of ‘30 Under 30 Civic Leaders‘ by Splashlife Magazine and the National Council on Citizenship. | |
| Markus Brauckmann | Konrad Adenauer Stiftung |
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Markus Brauckmann is the director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s (KAS) media programme for sub-Saharan Africa. KAS is a German foundation, with a track record for funding investigative journalism, political analysis for journalists, and media policy projects across the continent. KAS has also sought to help media owners and executives network with each other to share expertise and industry insights, as part of a drive to help improve media sustainability. More recently, KAS has underwritten digital experiments in mobile-based civic engagement tools to help deepen public discussion around government and public accountability. Prior to joining KAS, Brauckmann worked as an award-winning journalist before becoming an international media consultant for leading European TV companies. In 2009 he ran the internet video campaign for the re-election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the CDU party and campaign headquarters in Berlin. | |
| Ben Colmery | International Center for Journalists | |
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Ben Colmery is deputy director of the Knight International Journalism Fellowships programme at the International Center for Journalists in Washington D.C. This includes working with partners in Africa and elsewhere to support digital and data journalism experiments, as well as supporting the rollout of a global network of HacksHackers chapters. Colmery’s portfolio includes initiatives in eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and South Asia that are designed to build the capacity of journalists and citizen journalists to inform the public through both traditional and new media. He has also completed extensive research on the use of economic journalism to foster transparency in the oil, gas and mining industries in Ghana and Nigeria. His journalism development career began with a training programme he launched in Ukraine, in the wake of the Orange Revolution in 2004, to promote print journalism in several small Ukrainian communities. | |
| Zohra Dawood | Open Society Foundation | |
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Zohra Dawood is the Open Society Foundation’s executive director in South Africa and its country director in Indonesia. Dawood’s OSF work in South Africa has included extensive groundbreaking support for media development, including projects that helped establish independent investigative journalism centers, plus initiatives to nurture grassroots-based community radio stations, and support for some of the region’s earliest digital news experiments. Prior to joining OSF in 1999, Dawood was first chief researcher on land rights for a social justice organisation, before working with the post-1994 South African government to reform land ownership and environmental laws, create new policy, help settle land claims, and advise cabinet ministers and Nelson Mandela’s presidential office. Dawood’s current work for OSF focuses on wider human rights, international justice, and socio-economic and legal reform. In Indonesia, her role is specifically to institutionalise democracy and an open society in the largest Muslim country in the world. | |
| Syed Karim | Media Development Loan Fund | |
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Syed Karim leads the Media Development Loan Fund’s (MDLF) investment process for its new Digital News Ventures (DNV) fund. DNV is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MDLF that seeks to provide early stage venture capital for news-related startups, with a particular interest in opportunities from frontier markets such as Africa. In addition, Karim advises MDLF on its current portfolio of over 40 media companies on matters related to product development and digital strategy. This portfolio includes a number of successful investments into African media companies, that play a significant role in markets such as South Africa. Prior to joining MDLF, Karim led digital operations at Chicago Public Media as the non-profit organisation’s director of strategy and product development. | |
| Gabriel Sama | Rest of the World Media | |
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Gabriel Sama is co-founder of Rest of the World Media (RoW), a Silicon Valley-based consulting firm that helps media companies understand and implement new technologies. Specialising in adapting digital technologies for emergent markets, Sama has worked on projects to rethink and reinvent media in the US, El Salvador, Dubai, Russia, Greece, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico for clients that range from the Walt Disney Company and some of Latin America’s largest news publishers, to the Organization of American States and the International Center for Journalists. Prior to joining RoW, Sama launched and directed the Mexican edition of Quo magazine for the French publisher Hachette Filipacchi, and later served as founding editor for the Rumbo chain of four Spanish-language newspapers in Texas for the Pearson Group, publisher of the Financial Times. Sama has also worked as a journalist and editor on The Wall Street Journal’s Latin American edition and as editor-in-chief on a dotcom startup. He speaks regularly at major industry conferences and panels on social media, newsroom integration and the adoption of digital tools in newsrooms. | |
| Dan Sinker | Mozilla OpenNews | |
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Dan Sinker is the director of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project for Mozilla. The OpenNews project is a pioneering attempt to build innovation ecosystems to help journalism thrive on the open web. This includes producing next-generation web solutions that solve real problems in news, by supporting communities of developers and journalists as they make, learn and invent together. One of OpenNews’ flagship initiatives deploys programmers into news organisations for a year at a time to collaborate and innovate in new ways. Prior to joining Mozilla, Sinker taught in the journalism department at Columbia College Chicago where he focused on entrepreneurial journalism and the mobile web. He is credited as one of the creators of real-time digital storytelling through the @MayorEmanuel Twitter account, and was the founder of the influential underground culture magazine Punk Planet until its closure in 2007. | |
| Edward Anderson | World Bank Institute | |
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Edward Anderson coordinates the World Bank’s ICT Knowledge platform’s programme to use digital engagement tools for building greater public transparency and civic participation, as well as more accountability around public services. This includes engaging with technology communities in Tanzania and Kenya, where Africa’s open data movement has taken root. Anderson’s original training is as an aerospace engineer. He started his career with the UN Programme on Space Applications for Disaster Management and European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Science and Applications Directorate, where he focussed largely on remote sensing, mapping, risk modelling for climate change adaptation in water resources, coastal zones, epidemics and food security. In 2004 Anderson launched a technology start-up for early warning systems in East Africa – focussed on a proof of concept for new diagnostic tools in malaria epidemic surveillance. After supporting the 2006 Development Marketplace for Health Innovations, Anderson worked in disaster risk operations for the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, building new partnerships with technical communities including NASA, Google, Random Hacks of Kindness, and CrisisCommons. Throughout his career, Anderson has sought to find ways to harness science and technology for development. | |
| Rakesh Rajani | Twaweza | |
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Rakesh Rajani is the head of Twaweza (meaning ‘we can make it happen’ in Swahili), a 10-year initiative to enhance access to information, citizen agency, and public accountability in East Africa. Twaweza’s work includes a growing focus on digital tools for citizen reporting and civic engagement, including data journalism. Until the end of 2007 Rajani served as the founding executive director of HakiElimu, an independent organization that promotes citizen engagement in education in Tanzania. His interests include the connections between information, imagination, and public action; political economy of policy making; and budget transparency and public engagement. Outside of Twaweza, Rajani advises/serves on several boards, including Revenue Watch International, Aidspan (a watchdog of the Global Fund), the International Budget Partnership (IBP), ONE, the Foundation for Civil Society in Tanzania (FCS), and theHewlett/Gates Foundations’ initiative on Quality Education in Developing Countries (QEDC). He has also been a fellow of Harvard University since 1998, most recently involved in its Joint Learning Initiative on Children and AIDS(JLICA). He has written and/or edited over 300 papers, popular publications, and op-eds in English and Swahili. | |
| Gustav Praekelt | Praekelt Foundation | |
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Gustav Praekelt is the founder and chief executive of one of Africa’s first digital interactive studios, the South Africa-based Praekelt Group. The company is a leader in mobile platforms for developing and emerging markets, and provided the platform to create the Praekelt Foundation in 2006 to leverage the power of mobile phones to transform Africa. This social business develops robust, highly scalable mobile solutions for social good, and projects emerging out of Praekelt Foundation have already reached over 50 million people across 15 countries in Africa. Praekelt’s work at both the company and foundation saw him named an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2010 and invited to become part of the faculty for PopTech’s Social Innovation Fellows Program. Praekelt is a passionate advocate of the idea that mobile technology should be available to all. He is a frequent speaker at a variety of international and African conferences. | |
| Jose Alonso | World Wide Web Foundation | |
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José Alonso leads the World Wide Web Foundation’s on open data initiatives, with the goal of helping to build locally sustainable open knowledge ecosystems in low or middle-income countries. This includes support for data journalism and open data initiatives in Ghana and Chile, as well as producing replicable examples and resources for the broader global Open Data community. Outside of Africa, Alonso has led open data projects for local and regional governments in Spain, has co-chaired the Open Data initiative for the national government of Spain (awarded as the most user-friendly in Europe), and has served in European Open Data expert panels. He is also a member of the Nominating Committee at ICANN. Prior to joining the Foundation, José held several positions at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) where he managed the W3C Office in Spain, was key in establishing and led the W3C eGovernment Activity, co-chaired the W3C eGovernment Interest Group, and served as Member of the W3C Advisory Committee. He combined these roles with other positions at CTIC over several years such as Head of e-Administration and Open Government and Senior Advisor on Open Standards. He has been named several times as one of the most influential Internet people in Spain, has previously worked as IT analyst, consultant and trainer, and even founded his own Web startup back in 1997. | |
| Larry Kilman | World Association of Newspapers & News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) | |
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Larry Kilman is Deputy CEO and Executive Director of Communications and Public Affairs for the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the global organisation representing more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. With WAN-IFRA and its precursor, the World Association of Newspapers, since 1998, Mr Kilman has had a privileged position from which to witness the evolving newspaper business. Before that, he had a long career in the news business on three continents, notably with the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Radio Free Europe. | |
| Keith Hammonds | Ashoka Knowledge Initiative | |
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Keith Hammonds is director of the Ashoka Knowledge initiative, which advances citizenship and strengthens democratic society by identifying and supporting knowledge innovations that better inform, connect, and engage people around the world. With support from Google, he helped create the Citizen Media project, which has sourced nearly 500 innovations from over 70 countries. Hammonds most recently was executive editor at Fast Company magazine, where he helped shape editorial strategy across the magazine—and where he co-founded the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards. Over eight years, he wrote many of Fast Company’s defining articles, including: “Why We Hate HR,” “Balance is Bunk,” “Size is not a Strategy,” and “The New Face of Global Competition.” Hammonds also has been a bureau chief and editor for BusinessWeek in Boston and New York; a writer for The New York Times in London and Johannesburg; a consultant to New Nation in Johannesburg; director of an emergency food distribution program in Namibia; and (currently) coach of the Firebolts, a fearsome girls soccer team. |
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| Jose Zamora | Univision | |
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Jose Zamora joined Univision in June 2012. Jose leads strategic communications for Univision News. In that role he is responsible of ensuring that content produced by Univision’s news division has the widest possible reach and impact. Jose also manages the integration of media innovations into the newsroom and helps develop partnerships with foundations, nonprofits and other media and technology organizations that allow Univision News to further inform, engage and empower its audience. Prior to joining Univision, Jose managed Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge, an eight-year, $46 million initiative to spur media innovation across the world. Zamora also helped manage Knight Foundation’s journalism and media innovation portfolio, where he helped develop over 100 grants to advance media innovation, totaling over $32 million.Zamora’s work included pioneering new type of grants and funding mechanisms such as program related investments and creating intellectual property language and open-source software guidelines for new experimental grant-making. He is a journalist, columnist, blogger and a former news executive with elPeriódico in Guatemala. He has a law degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a specialization in media law fromOxford’s Media Law Advocates Programme and a master’s in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. | |
Advisory Council
| Amadou Mahtar Ba | African Media Initiative | |
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Amadou Mahtar Ba is co-founder and current chief executive of the African Media Initiative (AMI) – the organisation that manages ANIC. Outside of his AMI work, Ba is co-founder and chairperson of AllAfrica Global Media, Inc – owner and operator of http://allafrica.com – an international multi-media content service provider, systems technology developer and the largest distributor of African news and information worldwide. Prior to starting AllAfrica, Ba helped lead the successful restructuring and privatisation of the Pan-African News Agency (PANA), and also worked as communications director for BICIS Bank, a subsidiary of the French banking group BNP Paribas. Ba currently serves as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council for the Future of Journalism, as well as on the advisory board for the Knight International Journalism Fellowships administered by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the Africa Policy Advisory Board of ONE, the advisory council of the Open Institute, and the advisory board for Reporting Development News Africa (rDNA).
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| Stephen King | Omidyar Network | |
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Stephen King is a partner at Omidyar Network, where he leads the organisation’s global investment efforts on government transparency and also applies media and technology to create positive social impact. His portfolio includes FrontlineSMS, Global Voices, mySociety, Refugees United, The XYZ Show and Ushahidi. Prior to Omidyar Network, King served as the chief executive of the BBC World Service Trust, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programmes in more than 40 countries in the developing world. He helped establish the Trust’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organisations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, King was the executive director of the International Council on Social Welfare, an international organisation working to promote social development. He currently serves on the boards at Ushahidi, Global Voices and mySociety. | |
| Ory Okolloh | ||
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Ory Okolloh is Google’s policy manager for sub-Saharan Africa, where she works to encourage access to information and open knowledge, as well as leads Google’s efforts to help Africa digitise public records. In Kenya, this has included digitisation of over 100 years of Government Gazettes. Prior to joining Google, Okolloh co-founded the globally acclaimed Ushahidi crisis mapping toolkit and served as the organisation’s executive director from inception until December 2010. Okolloh is also the co-founder of Mzalendo, a website that tracks the performance of Kenyan members of Parliament. Outside of her Google work, Okolloh is a frequent speaker on issues around citizen journalism, the role of technology in Africa, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa at conferences including TED, World Economic Forum, Poptech, CGI, Techonomy, Mobile Web Africa, and the Monaco Media Forum. She serves on the board of the African Media Initiative (AMI), is a member of the Young Global Leaders and has received numerous awards including the Monaco Media Forum Prize, WEF Tech Pioneer. | |
| Michael Maness | Knight Foundation | |
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Michael Maness joined the Knight Foundation in 2011, to lead the organisation’s Journalism and Media Innovation programme. This includes the $46 million Knight News Challenge on which ANIC is modelled, and a range of other digital journalism projects that have helped reshape the media landscape in the USA. Prior to joining Knight Foundation, Manes was Gannett’s vice president of innovation and design. During his tenure, he led the creation of an innovation process based on human-centered design and launched multiple new brands. He also served as vice president of strategic planning for Gannett’s newspaper division, launched several local news sites across the company and developed the industry’s first daily video newscast on the Web done without a television partner. Maness was named to the Newspaper Association of America’s list of “20 under 40” and was a co-winner in 2007 of the Chairman’s Special Achievement Award at Gannett. Before joining Gannett, Maness was an analyst and media consultant, a campaign manager and a marketing account executive. Maness has been a member of Knight Foundation’s journalism advisory committee for the past four years. | |
| Mirjana Milosevic | World Association of Newspapers & News Producers (WAN-IFRA) | |
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Mirjana Milosevic leads WAN-IFRA’s global media development programmes, that include support for pilot projects and experimentation with mobile news platforms in Africa, as well as training women media executives across the continent, and regular research projects that produce some of the world’s most autoritative analysis and industry intelligence on African media trends. Milosevic is a media development expert specialising in the area of business development and economic sustainability of media in emerging markets. Before joining WAN-IFRA, she was director of the Belgrade Media Center, and has previously worked as a media researcher and as a journalist in Serbia during the 1990’s. Educated both in Serbia and the United Kingdom, she holds BA in Economics and Marketing, and MA in Communication. | |
| Joyce Barnathan | International Center for Journalists | |
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Joyce Barnathan is president of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting quality journalism. ICFJ believes that independent, vigorous media are crucial in improving the human condition. As the definition of journalism continues to evolve, ICFJ offers practical, hands-on programmes that marry best professional practices with the latest digital innovation. Since its founding in 1984, ICFJ has worked with more than 70,000 professional and citizen journalists and media managers. Barnathan is also the chair of the Global Forum for Media Development, a network of 500 media assistance organisations that support the development of independent media. Previously, Barnathan served as the executive editor, Global Franchise, for BusinessWeek. She oversaw editorial content, managed product launches, created alliances, and ensured the integration of all BusinessWeek offerings across delivery channels. Prior to that, Barnathan completed a seven-year assignment as Asia regional editor and Hong Kong bureau manager for BusinessWeek. In addition to her reporting and writing duties, she helped launched the magazine’s Asian edition and managed its growing network of correspondents and stringers throughout the region. Barnathan came to BusinessWeek from Newsweek, where she served as State Department correspondent, Moscow Bureau Chief and Special Projects Correspondent covering presidential elections. She is the winner of five Overseas Press Club Awards, including three as part of BusinessWeek’s Asia team, as well as the National Headliner Award. She is a trustee of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowships Program. | |
| Jay Bhalla | Open Institute | |
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Jay Bhalla is co-founder and executive director for the Open Institute (OI) think tank, which is working with the African Media Initiative (AMI) to pioneer the continent’s first data journalism bootcamps and journalism-focused technology incubators. Prior to establishing OI in February 2012, Bhalla helped pioneer Kenya’s digital revolution as an innovation strategist leading the design of the Kenyan government’s 2006 ICT policy that kickstarted the nation’s digital startup culture. More recently, he played a leading role in shaping the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI). He continues to advise both the Kenyan government and the World Bank on tech strategies for civic engagement and appropriate technology. Bhalla has also helped build proof-of-concept grassroots community tools for monitoring government delivery and tracking State expenditure. Outside of his Open Data work, Jay spearheaded East Africa’s largest mobile web gathering, Pivot25, and also co-founded the world’s first kiSwahili text-to-speech startup. | |
ANIC Project Team
| Justin Arenstein | Project Manager | International Center for Journalists |
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Justin Arenstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and digital strategist who works for major media across the continent. He currently helps Google, the African Media Initiative (AMI) and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) strengthen watchdog newsrooms by piloting better civic engagement, forensic research and evidence-based reportage. This includes helping media adopt digital tools and data journalism strategies, as well as exploring citizen reporting, mobile news, and augmented reality platforms. Arenstein established and manages the $1m African News Innovation Challenge, and is spearheading the rollout of HacksHackers.com chapters and data journalism bootcamps across Africa to bring together journalists with technologists and mobile entrepreneurs. Building on the success of his own investigative newswire, African Eye News Service (AENS), Arenstein cofounded the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) in 2005 to improve cross-border pan-African collaboration and technical skills amongst journalists. He also cofounded the Association for Independent Publishers (AIP) to improve business models at watchdog media in the region, and cofounded the Southern African Freelance Association (SAFREA) to improve protection for independent journalists. Arenstein’s recent experiments in open data and data journalism have included cofounding the Investigative Dashboard (ID) helpdesk that gives journalists across the world forensic assistance in tracing companies, shareholders, or financial interests. In addition to his work on ANIC, Arenstein serves on the boards at the Open Democracy Advice Center (ODAC) in South Africa, which fights for access to information, and is a founding trustee of the Open Institute (OI) in Kenya, which is pioneering the open data movement across Africa. Arenstein’s own investigative reportage has sparked changes to national legislation on everything from land reform to citizen militia, and has helped put a senator, two Legislature speakers and a provincial cabinet minister behind bars. His reportage has also contributed to the ouster of two provincial premiers and a number of other cabinet ministers and senior state officials on charges ranging from child rape to corruption. One transnational story involving money laundering and rogue intelligence agents prompted Interpol arrests in the US, Kenya, and Switzerland. Arenstein is a Knight Fellow, Desmond Tutu Fellow, Print Media South Africa Fellow, and World Press Freedom Fellow. He has won international journalism awards across Africa, in the US and Europe. | |
| Dr Julie Taylor | ||
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Julie Taylor is Google’s head of communications and public affairs for sub-Saharan Africa. She hails from Zimbabwe, but has worked across a wide range of emerging markets since joining Google’s London office in 2007. After moving back to Africa, she implemented a programme to train African journalists how to make the most of the internet and Google’s tools. Before Google, Julie was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she earned both a doctorate and MPhil in Development Studies, focusing on San indigenous communities and environmental NGOs in rural northern Namibia. Julie holds a BA (Hons) in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, where she graduated with a starred First. She has authored multiple papers in academic journals in the field of anthropology and political ecology, and her book ‘Naming the Land’, will be published this year. Julie is currently based in Johannesburg with her potplants and enjoys the wilderness, ashtanga yoga, writing, and recycling. | |
| Phares Kariuki | African Media Initiative | |
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Phares Kariuki is the digital projects and community coordinator at the African Media Initiative (AMI), where he helps run ANIC and spearheads the rollout of HacksHackers.com chapters across the continent. The HacksHackers network seeks to bring together journalists with technologists, ranging from coders and developers to digital creatives and designers, to encourage collaborative experiments and projects designed to reinvent the way that African journalism works. Kariuki’s AMI portfolio also includes pioneering the continent’s first data journalism bootcamps, teaching media professionals how to build news-focused mobile apps, open data web services, and other online platforms to strengthen public accountability and civic engagement. Prior to joining AMI, Kariuki helped seed a range of other groundbreaking tech innovations in Kenya, including serving as an early volunteer of Kenya’s award-winning iHUB innovation center where he helped build the center’s mentorship model. He also established and continues to manage Kenya’s largest digital community of civic hackers, SkunkWorks, and has organised a range of local “apps for good” hackathons — including for international organisations such as the World Bank. Kariuki has previously worked as the lead solutions architect in sub-Saharan Africa for VMware at Westcon Africa, as well as a systems analyst and product development manager for other tech companies. | |
