Deadline: 24-Apr-22
Applications are now open for the Minority Africa Fellowship, a project by Minority Africa — a digital publication using data-driven multimedia journalism to tell African minority stories — targets journalists and storytellers from minority groups across Africa providing them with the platform, skill, and mentorship to report stories from and about their communities.
Through an intensive six-month paid program, fellows will polish their existing reporting abilities both from a skill and thematic perspective but will also be trained on the intersecting areas and groups of focus for the fellowship. This means that fellows are taught and leave the fellowship knowing how to cover groups outside of the immediate communities they belong to.
These groups include women, sexual, gender, ethnic, and religious minorities, persons with disabilities, migrants, asylum seekers, as well as refugees. They nonetheless acknowledge that all minorities across the continent do not fall under these broad categories and also focus on groups that exist outside of these general definitions.
Fellows will be trained by journalists from the Minority Africa newsroom as well as a network of journalists who work for or have worked across the continent with the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, Reuters, RFI, CNN, The Guardian, Time, and began legacy media companies tackling present media problems including one praised by former US President Barack Obama.
This training program includes modules on solutions journalism, data journalism, interrogating the scope of inclusive futures within the metaverse, as NFTs and AI adoption grow, and the geopolitics of climate change among others.
They will be paid a monthly allowance, receive an internet stipend, and intra-country travel related to the coverage of stories will be covered by Minority Africa.
By the end of the program, each fellow would have published 12 stories on Minority Africa. These stories will be a blend of reported multimedia features as well as opinions and analysis. The program is entirely virtual and the first cohort runs from May to October 2022.
Eligibility Criteria
The Minority Africa fellowship is open to journalists, filmmakers, writers, photographers, and storytellers who are from and living in any African country. Here is a complete list of the eligibility requirements below:
- Applicants must be at least 18 years of age by the commencement of the fellowship.
- They must be from and living in an African country.
- Must belong to one or more of the focus minority groups for the fellowship. These groups are: women, sexual minorities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, persons with disabilities, migrants, and refugees. They also acknowledge applicants who do not fall under these broad categories but are part of a minority group. Seeing as this is a fellowship targeted towards creators who are from minority communities, they will not consider applications from people who do not identify as a minority in Africa.
- Must have demonstrable work experience in their chosen area.
- Be able to commit 15 – 20 hours each week to the fellowship.
- Able to understand and communicate in English. The fellowship is primarily conducted in English. Applicants don’t have to be excellent speakers but they do have to know how to communicate in English. This on the other hand does not have to be the primary language they work in. They will consider applicants who for instance write primarily in other languages such as Portuguese, Swahili, or French but are able to communicate in English.
- Access to the internet and good data connection. While they understand internet access is not available everywhere on the continent, being an entirely virtual fellowship, connectivity is a crucial component. Besides their allowance, fellows will be provided with a monthly internet stipend. They are also continually working on a way to potentially eliminate the need for a strong internet connection in subsequent cohorts of the fellowship.
For more information, visit https://fellowship.minorityafrica.org/overview/