Dubawa Starts 2021 Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking and Research Fellowship
Written by Nanji Nandang on May 19, 2021
West Africa’s verification and fact-checking platform, Dubawa has commenced training for the 2021 Fellowship program with 26 fact-checkers from 5 West African countries to combat misinformation in the sub-region.
The Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking and Research Fellowship named in honour of Ghanaian Professor Kwame Karikari, redoubtable media freedom advocate and founder of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), is a brainchild of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), and out of 200 applicants from the Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone 26 fellows were selected; the Nigerian Cohort of this fellowship is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Following its announcement of the commencement of the yearly fellowship in Abuja on Monday, Dubawa started the virtual training for the 2021 fellows on Tuesday. According to a statement signed by the DUBAWA programme manager, Adedeji Adekunle, stating that the commencement training for fellows that is designed to equip the fellows with strategies and tools to combat misinformation will end on Friday, the 21st of May 2021.
Adekunle said that “upon completion and evidence of competence after a ten-course module the participants will graduate into the six months, in-country fellowship,”
‘The training faculty for the programme is drawn from a pool of the leading global experts in the field of fact-checking who come with individual and organizational talents.’ he said.
On Tuesday during the first session, the Executive Director of PTCIJ, Dapo Olorunyomi taught the fellows on accountability journalism and the role of the media in West Africa. In the same vein the founder of Africa Check, Peter Cunliffe-Jones gave the fellows orientation on legal approaches to fixing information disorder In the second session.
During his lecture on ethics of journalism and fact-checking on Wednesday, Professor Kwame Karikari stated that, “journalism has a burden of being factual that is why fact checking is important” noting that, ‘facts are the mother of journalism, the centre piece’.
‘INSTITUTING A CULTURE OF TRUTH AND VERIFICATION’
DUBAWA is an independent, transparent, and non-partisan verification and fact-checking platform, initiated by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) in 2018.
Dubawa aims at instituting a culture of truth and verification in public discourse and journalism through strategic partnerships between the media, government, civil society organizations, technology giants, and the public.
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