African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC)

ANIC is Africa's largest innovation fund for data journalism, newsroom experimentation, digital adaption and media tech start-ups.

Underwritten by Africa's only continental umbrella association of media owners and operators, the African Media Initiative (AMI), the fund is designed to kickstart experimentation with new technologies. Winners will receive seed grants ranging from $12,500 to a maximum of $100,000 for more ambitious projects. To ensure that grantees build robust business models, winners will also receive technical advice and start-up support, as well as one-on-one mentoring from some of the world’s leading media experts. The contest will target solutions to technology challenges facing African media, including ways to strengthen data-based investigative journalism, audience engagement, mobile news distribution, data visualization, revenue streams and workflow systems. AMI will launch the contest website in December 2011. In the first phase, African journalists and publishers will be asked to identify the most pressing challenges facing the industry. Once these have been identified, AMI will issue a call for applications targeting these issues in February 2012. Winners will be chosen through a rigorous two-phase judging process, consisting of public voting and a review of finalists by a panel of experts. The top contenders will receive a combination of cash and technical support. Winners will then test their innovations in AMI member-newsrooms and showcase projects at international media gatherings. The African innovation contest is part of AMI’s broader initiative to build digital entrepreneurship within traditional media. AMI is also supporting a new network of HacksHackers.com chapters across Africa that will bring technologists together with journalists to help pilot projects in digital media. The chapters will run workshops and help incubate ideas for the African News Innovation Challenge. ANIC is supported by Google, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the Knight Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), Omidyar Network, the US State Department, and the World Association of Newspapers & News Producers (WAN-IFRA).