The AKU GSMC Media Innovation Centre, together with its partners DW Akademie and Media Challenge Initiative (MCI) are looking for the brightest media minds from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to join our 2021-2022 Innovators-in-Residence program, a 12-month incubation and accelerator program that provides mentorship, training and coaching to media innovators in East Africa.

We want to ensure innovators from both rural and urban areas get access to this program and for this reason, this year’s cohort will include a special track for rural innovators.

We want to support innovators working on ideas that promote journalism in rural communities in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Specifically, we are looking for media solutions that improve access to information, public dialogue and participation for rural communities considering the great linguistic diversity, potentially low connectivity, limited access to professional news media and low literacy rates. Innovators working outside cities such as Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Kampala are highly encouraged to apply.

Urban-based innovators are also highly encouraged to apply as we also have slots for them. We highly encourage applicants to apply as pre-formed teams of journalists, storytellers, visual artists, data analytics specialists, photographers, videographers, graphic designers, cartoonists, illustrators, coders, programmers and/or animators who will work as a team to create viable solutions to the pressing challenges of the East African media landscape. Individual applicants who do not yet have pre-formed teams are welcome to apply, but should be ready to build a team once they qualify for our programme.

Access more details on the call for applications here in ENGLISH or SWAHILI.