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The African Fact-Checking Awards 2015, co-sponsored by AFP Foundation & Africa Check, open for entries

Entries are open for The 2015 Edition of the African Fact Checking Awards, co-sponsored by the AFP Foundation and the African Fact-Checking website

The awards, which were launched in 2014, are the first journalism awards staged in Africa, or anywhere else in the world, specifically to honour the work of investigative fact-checking; a new and innovative branch of journalism growing around the world.
 
“The 2014 awards attracted some high-quality entries and showed the considerable interest that exists in Africa in the work of fact-checking. We hope that this year’s awards will attract even more entries, especially from French-speaking journalists.” said AFP Foundation Chairman Emmanuel Hoog 
 
The AFP Foundation devised and launched Africa Check, the continent’s first, independent fact-checking website, in 2012 in partnership with the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
 
“Africa Check was set up not just to fact-check the claims leaders made in Africa, but to foster and encourage fact-checking by other media across the continent. And that is what these awards are all about,” said Africa Check Executive Director Peter Cunliffe-Jones.
 
Entries were received from more 40 media in over 10 countries for the first edition of the awards, held in 2014.
 
They were won by Ghanaian journalists Edem Srem and Gifty Andoh Appiah, for a video that exposed as false claims by the Ghanaian government to have eradicated the harmful practice of alluvial gold mining. Journalists Paul Shalala from Zambia and Victor Amadala from Kenya were runners up.
The winners in 2015 will receive a cash prize of 2000 euros, with two runners up to receive cash prizes of 1,000 euros each.
 
Entries are eligible from radio, TV, print or online newspaper, and can be accepted in either French or English. If they were originally produced in another language, a translation into English or French is required.
Entries close at midnight on 31 August 2015.
 


About Africa Check :
For more on Africa Check, please visit the website : www.africacheck.org or contact Executive Director Peter Cunliffe-Jones at: [email protected]


About the AFP Foundation : 
The AFP Foundation is a non-profit organisation set up in 2007 by the AFP news agency to provide media training and support press standards in countries around the world.

 

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