By Code for Africa
The African Fact-Checking Alliance’s training programme in East Africa is supported by like-minded institutional partners who provide funding and direct support. These partners share a common vision of creating a world where accurate information is accessible to all.
The partners are UNESCO, the European Union, the World Health Organisation, the International Fact Check Network (IFCN) and the African Centre for People, Institutions and Society.
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) advances cooperation in education, the sciences, culture and communication as strategic areas to promote peace and security amidst rising pressures of change in the international community.
Part of UNESCO’s mandate is to defend the freedom of expression and press freedom as a key condition for democracy and development. The organisation works to further the universal respect for justice, rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Serving as a laboratory of ideas, UNESCO helps countries adopt international standards and manages programmes that foster the free flow of ideas and knowledge-sharing. Cultural diversity is under attack and new forms of intolerance, rejection of scientific facts and threats to freedom of expression challenge peace and human rights, 70 years after the organisation was established. In response, UNESCO’s duty remains to reaffirm the humanist missions of education, science and culture.
UNESCO collaborates with other organisations as part of advancing mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples through all means of mass communication.
European Union
The European Union is a political and economic union of 27 member states with a goal of promoting its values and peace among its citizens. On the world stage, the EU plays an important role in diplomacy and works to foster stability, security and prosperity, democracy, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.
The EU institutions and countries are the world’s leading donor of development assistance and cooperation. With regard to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the EU provides funding to promote peaceful, just and inclusive societies. It also supports development work through global partnership and dialogues with over 150 countries and civil society organisations.
World Health Organisation
The World Health Organisation is a specialised agency within the United Nations system on international health with a presence in 150 countries. The values of the WHO reflect the principles of human rights, universality and equity.
WHO’s vision is a world where all peoples attain the highest possible level of health and a mission to keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable. WHO is guided by the best available science, evidence and technical expertise and works together with partners to strengthen impact at the country level.
WHO supports Member States and partners including funds and foundations, civil society organizations and the private sector to attain their health objectives as well as their national health policies and strategies.
The International Fact-Checking Network
The International Fact-Checking Network is dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide. A unit of the Poynter Institute, IFCN was established in 2015 to support fact-checking initiatives by promoting best practices and exchanges in the field.
Among other things, IFCN monitors trends, formats and policy-making about fact-checking worldwide, and helps surface common positions among the world’s fact-checkers.
The organisation also promotes basic standards through the fact-checkers’ code of principles and projects to track the impact of fact-checking, provides training and advocates for more fact-checking, including through an annual International Fact-Checking Day. Additionally, IFCN promotes collaborative efforts in international fact-checking.
The African Centre for People, Institutions and Society
The Africa Centre for People, Institutions and Society, Acepis, is an Afro-centric think-tank dedicated to bolstering access to credible information to shape the public dialogue, inform policy and drive inclusive sustainable development in Africa. Acepis seeks to leverage information to provide suitable solutions for Africa’s organisations to grow, serve and impact lives. The organisation does this through strategic communication, applied research, organizational development support and knowledge brokering.
Established in 2012, Acepis is founded on the understanding that open, accountable, and inclusive governance is essential to the prosperity of society. Acepis believes that access to information, augmented by sufficient capacity to interrogate and utilise it, can catalyse meaningful involvement of citizens in affecting the way they are governed while generating suitable solutions that promote inclusive sustainable development. Acepis thus seeks to link local level demand for public information with national and international level supply chains and leverage this to enhance evidence-based policy making, accountable governance and inclusive, pro-poorest sustainable development.
Code for Africa
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of civic technology and data journalism labs, with teams in 21 countries. CfA builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability. This includes building infrastructure like the continent’s largest open data portals at openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and the sensors.AFRICA air quality sensor network.
CfA also manages the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which gives the continent’s best muckraking newsrooms the best possible forensic data tools, digital security and whistleblower encryption to help improve their ability to tackle crooked politicians, organised crime and predatory big business. CfA also runs one of Africa’s largest skills development initiatives for digital journalists, and seed funds cross-border collaboration.
CfA is a non-profit organisation, registered as a public benefit organisation in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
PesaCheck
PesaCheck is currently Africa’s largest non-profit fact-checking initiative, with teams in 12 countries.
PesaCheck produces over 2,000 articles per year in English, French, Amharic and Kiswahili, with additional African languages scheduled to launch in 2022.
PesaCheck’s in-house newsroom is staffed by full-time veteran journalists and editors, and is complemented by an affiliate network of news desks in independent partner media where PesaCheck helps establish and mentor newsrooms to launch their own fact-checking initiatives.
PesaCheck’s content is syndicated by a wider network of media partners, ranging from national TV channels to real-time breaking alert services on WhatsApp and social media reaching over 11 million people monthly. These breaking news services are augmented by data-driven projects such as TaxClock, a project that tracks how politicians spend taxpayer funds, and PromiseTracker, a toolkit that helps track political promises by politicians.
PesaCheck is accredited by the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), and is also formally recognised as an official partner of the 3rd Party Fact Checker (3PFC) coalition underwritten by Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Source, Factcheck.africa
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