Speakers
Justin Arenstein
Justin is an award-winning investigative journalist and digital strategist currently helping Google and the African Media Initiative strengthen Africa’s watchdog media by working with newsrooms to implement better forensic research and evidence-based reportage. This includes helping media adopt digital tools and data journalism strategies. Justin manages the $1m African News Innovation Challenge, is rolling out HacksHackers chapters across Africa, and supports newsroom-based experiments with citizen reporting, mobile news, and augmented reality platforms.
Justin is a former Press Councillor in South Africa, and continues to serve on several media industry bodies and think tanks. His investigative reportage has helped put a senator, two legislature speakers and a provincial cabinet minister behind bars, and contributed to the ouster of two provincial premiers and several other cabinet ministers and state officials on charges ranging from child rape to corruption.
Chris Roper
ICFJ Knight Fellow Chris Roper is the data editor for ICFJ’s Code for Africa (CfAfrica) data journalism initiative in four hub countries: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania.
Roper is a veteran digital strategist with more than 15 years experience in different newsrooms implementing digital programs for the changing media landscape and as a means to creating better journalism. He has been a longtime pioneer of digital journalism, giving it a central position alongside print media in journalism.
Roper most recently held the position of Editor-in-Chief at Mail & Guardian, where he was the first editor-in-chief of a major South African newspaper to come from a digital background. Under his creative leadership, Mail & Guardian won the first ever CNN Africa Digital Journalism Award in 2012; the first ever Standard Bank Sikuvile Award for Online Multimedia in 2012; and the first ever Sikuvile Multiplatform award in 2013.
Stephen Abbott Pugh
ICFJ Knight Fellow Stephen Abbott Pugh is leading the design and execution of audience engagement strategies for ICFJ’s Code for Africa (CfAfrica) data journalism initiative in four hub countries: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Abbott Pugh is a digital journalist and project manager who has helped shape and deliver the digital strategies for two of the UK’s most high-profile websites. He is an expert on how technology and connectivity can revolutionize the way stories are told, information is shared and change is delivered. Based in Rwanda, Abbott Pugh co-founded a civic technology company in 2014 and launched Sobanukirwa.rw, the country’s first access-to-information website in partnership with a local civil society organization.
Previously, Abbott Pugh worked as an executive producer at The Guardian and as head of digital projects for the UK Parliament. Abbott Pugh worked as a digital advocate leading initiatives to discover new audiences by harnessing online tools and using data in a citizen-centric way.
Abbott Pugh’s other past projects include the Guardian’s U.S. embassy cables revelations with Wikileaks, exploring open journalism and working with Google, Tumblr and Soundcloud to reimagine live event coverage.
Catherine Gicheru
ICFJ Knight Fellow Catherine Gicheru will be helping teams of Code for Africa (CfAfrica) journalists and technologists embedded in newsrooms and local CitizenLabs to harness data to build compelling stories.
A veteran print journalist with more than 30 years in the Kenyan media scene, Catherine is passionate about the need to incorporate data to add to the quality and depth of print journalism. Most recently a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University where she looked at the challenges facing print media in sub-Saharan Africa, Catherine was the founding editor of the Star newspaper which has since established itself as the fastest growing newspaper in Kenya. Under her leadership, several reporters received international accolades for their investigative work. Prior to this, she served as the News Editor and Investigations Editor at the Nation Media Group, the first woman to hold those positions in the history of mainstream Kenyan media.
Friedrich Lindenberg
Friedrich Lindenberg is a coder and data journalist working on web technologies for new narrative and investigative techniques. He was an 2014 ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow with Code for Africa, and a 2013 Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow at Spiegel Online.
Previously, he contributed to various projects at the Open Knowledge Foundation, including OpenSpending, a platform that helps citizens across the world keep track of government finance.
Khadija Sharife
Khadija Sharife is an African investigative researcher and writer. She helps coordinate the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), Investigative Dashboard (Africa), and the EU-funded Environmental Trade and Liability (EJOLT). She is a fellow to the World Policy Institute and contributor to the Tax Justice Network (Africa). She has published in a number of academic and mainstream media including Africa Confidential and the World Policy Journal. During the past year, she has helped uncover billions of dollars in mispriced minerals from African countries including South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe among others. Her specialisation is financial opacity, political ecology and corruption. She is based in South Africa.
Heinrich Böhmke
Heinrich Böhmke is an experienced trainer and director at the Specialised Skills Institute of SA. He is also an investigator and litigator with experience in prosecuting public and private sector corruption and sexual misconduct matters among other investigations in South Africa. In 2013, Bohmke adapted the courtroom method of interrogating narratives and witnesses for investigative journalists and editors.The courses has been presented multiple times across Africa including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda as well as Senegal and Ghana.
David Lemayian
David Lemayian serves as Code for Africa’s lead technologist, managing a team of software developers and pilot CitizenLab accelerator, plus all shared “backbone” infrastructure.
Code for Africa (CfAfrica) is the continent’s largest open data initiative, using technology and data to help citizens shape their governments and hold those in power to account. CfAfrica currently has country-based programmes in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Serah Njambi Kiburu
Serah Rono serves as Code for Africa’s Developer Advocate, championing its software solutions and also serving as community coordinator, based in Kenya, working with its technical pan-African projects/programmes. She has also served as a web developer in Code For Africa, building web applications at CitizenLab accelerators.
Code for Africa (CfAfrica) is the continent’s largest open data initiative, using technology and data to help citizens shape their governments and hold those in power to account. CfAfrica currently has country-based programmes in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
