The Africa Data Hub (ADH) is a collective of data organisations operating across three African countries that work together to provide local journalists with verified accurate up-to-date data, tools, training, mentoring and support to tell the stories that matter with the data they need. We believe that access to quality data not only has the potential to challenge power and the status quo, but also to have a direct impact in addressing vulnerability, inequity and exclusion.
The first phase of this project focused almost exclusively on the COVID-19 crisis and ends in 2022. A key vision of ADH going forward is to see data mainstreamed into news stories and with that, we are also building a community of data journalists who can engage each other for support, resources and solidarity in their work.
We are in the process of opening up important African datasets that are inaccessible to journalists that need it. This work involves sourcing, aggregating, cleaning and processing data into usable formats for further analysis and reporting. We are also working on demystifying data as a helpful starting point and value add in stories.
Through our fellowships, training and networking programmes, we’re also building relationships with newsrooms and journalists, understanding what support journalists need and capacitating them to use data in their storytelling. Part of this work also includes mainstreaming gender in African news through data.
By doing this we hope to overcome two intertwined challenges: (1) limited access to data on the continent and (2) the considerable resource and skills constraints faced by local journalists particularly around data analysis and related storytelling.
