The Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism’s (CCIJ’s) West Africa Hub has been selected as one of five recipients of the Gateway Grants.
In a statement, it said the grant is supported through MuckRock’s partnership with the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW).
According to the statement, it would provide financial, technical, and editorial support for initiatives that promote and strengthen election transparency and access globally.
“The Gateway Grants aim to empower organizations working on projects that contribute to a more transparent and accessible world. The collaboration with FFDW underscores a commitment to developing a resilient and scalable infrastructure to preserve humanity’s most crucial documents for the long term,” the statement said.
It said the Hub would embark on a project to enhance transparency in Nigeria’s 2023 elections by involving the digitization and analysis of election result papers and providing data insights to journalists.
“Leveraging MuckRock’s tools, CCIJ plans to transcribe and archive over 170,000 election documents in real time, ensuring their permanent preservation. This will enable a network of newsrooms to investigate alleged election irregularities, contributing to a more informed and engaged citizenry,” it added.
It quoted CCIJ’s Founder and Executive Director, Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, that the support would be instrumental in advancing its mission to promote transparency and accountability in the democratic process through the investigative reporting and capacity building with the journalists it would work with.
On his part, CCIJ’s Africa Editor, Ajibola Amzat, emphasized the significance of the project saying, the collaborative investigation aims to probe issues surrounding the Nigerian election beyond mere numerical discrepancies and examine multiple factors contributing to the contested electoral outcome.
“By investigating activities of various players and how their role contributed or undermined the integrity of the election , CCIJ plans to provide a more nuanced understanding of the election’s fairness and the impact of manipulative practices of the political class and their collaborators.
“We hope our reporting will contribute to the improvement of elections not only in Nigeria, but the rest of Africa, and indeed other countries outside of the continent,” Amzat said.
He added that grant would not only provide financial support but also offer technical assistance to CCIJ’s West Africa Hub.
“The resulting open-source improvements to the platform will be accessible to all DocumentCloud users, fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the journalism community.”
