#IkoKaziKE Code for Africa // Fact-Checkers in Kenya and Tanzania

Code for Africa (CfA) has immediate vacancies for full-time Fact-Checkers based in Kenya and Tanzania, for the PesaCheck team. Candidates must have demonstrable journalistic and investigative research experience and excellent writing skills.

PesaCheck is the continent’s largest indigenous fact-checking initiative, with teams in 12 African countries, and is incubated by Code for Africa (CfA). It researches and debunks misinformation published both online and elsewhere in more traditional media.

It also tracks promises by public officials and shines a light on public finances to ensure the public is not misled.

The successful candidate will join a team of multinational and multilingual fact-checkers and copy editors who investigate claims circulating both social and traditional media platforms.

Applicants fluent in two or more official languages in each country will have an advantage

Required:  minimum requirements include:

• Proven experience in journalism, and/or digital investigations with impeccable writing skills.
• Ability to unpack complex issues, explaining them in ways that any audience can understand.
• An eye for factual accuracy, and a nose for news.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced multimedia newsroom and meet tight deadlines.
• Be politically non-partisan.
• Obsessive attention to detail, with excellent numeracy, critical thinking and analytical skills.
• Familiarity with digital verification/fact-checking techniques and tools.

Preferred: Candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage: 

• 4+ years of work experience.
• Work experience in transnational multilingual digital newsrooms.
• Experience using social media as a source for news.
• A demonstrable understanding of public (government) finance management/budget processes.
• Experience with digital collaboration tools, including Slack and Google Drive.
• Data literacy and/or data journalism experience.

Language and Location Requirements:

• Location: Kenya and Tanzania
• Languages: English, Kiswahili
• Preferred but not required: French, local dialects.

About the Role

The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s transnational fact-checking team. The team is responsible for helping the public separate fact from fiction, using a range of journalistic techniques and digital verification tools.

You will join PesaCheck’s editorial newsdesk, working as part of a network of locally-based investigative researchers in 12 African countries.

You will monitor social and traditional media to source misinformation and other malign content in order to debunk it. Using these claims, you will produce daily fact-check articles that will be published on Pesacheck.org and which may be syndicated into partner media. You will also collaborate with PesaCheck media partners and/or CfA’s digital innovation teams on election monitoring or other special projects.

Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:

• Proactively monitoring a variety of local/regional public sources, ranging from mainstream media to social media and chat apps, to detect possible instances of misleading or malign content (such as hate speech).
• Analysing selected public statements/manuscripts for factual errors, logical flaws, and/or significant omissions to determine whether PesaCheck should classify the content as misinformation or as another form of misleading or malign content.
• Examining the sources mentioned in selected public statements/manuscripts and, where necessary, identifying additional documents and/or sources to help determine whether PesaCheck should classify the content as misinformation or as another form of misleading or malign content.
• Producing ‘explainer articles’ that outline why a specific public statement/manuscript has been classified as misinformation or another form of malign content. Your articles will be based on substantive desktop research and interviews, accurately distilling relevant information into explanations that are easily understandable by ‘ordinary’ audiences, and that are substantiated by tangible evidence.

 What C4A will offer:

• A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
• A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
• Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry.
• A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences, and interacting with colleagues around the world.

How to apply

Please fill in this form by October 20, 2021. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

About Code for Africa

Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 70 staff in 19 countries, who build digital democracy solutions that are intended to give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.

This includes building infrastructure such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and largest open source civic software portal, commons.AFRICA, as well as the largest repository of investigative document-based evidence, source.AFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network that gives citizens their own ‘eyes in the sky, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in 12 African countries, and the sensors.AFRICA remote-sensing citizen science initiative to combat air/water pollution.

CfA also incubates the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), as an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organized crime, and big business.

The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south, and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.