West Africa Hub of CCIJ gets Gateway Grant for election transparency project

The Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) is happy to announce that it has been selected as one of five recipients of the Gateway Grants. 

These grants, supported through MuckRock’s partnership with the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), provide financial, technical, and editorial support for initiatives that promote and strengthen 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.

CCIJ’s West Africa Hub is set to embark on a project to enhance transparency in Nigeria’s 2023 elections. The project will involve the digitization and analysis of  election result papers, 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.

CCIJ Founder and Executive Director of CCIJ Jeff Kelly Lowenstein expressed his enthusiasm and gratitude for the Gateway Grant: “We are honored to be selected as a recipient of the Gateway Grant. This support will be instrumental in advancing our mission to promote transparency and accountability in the democratic process through the investigative reporting and capacity building we do with the journalists with whom we are fortunate to collaborate.”

Ajibola Amzat, CCIJ Africa Editor, 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.”

The Gateway Grant will 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.

This Gateway Grant is a testament to the impactful work being done by CCIJ and its commitment to journalism innovation. We are excited about the opportunities this grant opens up for us to make a lasting impact.

For further information about CCIJ and its projects, please visit the CCIJ website.

Source: CCIJ

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