Google has launched the Global Initiative for Excellence in Journalism Education to enhance journalism training in Africa.
The search giant announced this during the virtual Google News Initiative for Africa event holding from October 25 to 29.
The initiative, which will be rolled out over the next 18 months, in partnership with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is aimed at updating journalism education programmes in over 100 journalism institutions in Africa.
President for EMEA Business and Operations, Google, Matt Brittin, said, “The pandemic has changed the way people interact with news and accelerated that shift to digital. There has never been a time access to good quality journalism has been more important. This programme will seek to establish, define and implement the local definitions of excellence in journalism. We will work with the 100 different journalism schools targeting to benefit over 4,000 journalists.”
UNESCO will use its of established journalism schools to launch the collaborative programme that will enable journalists to better respond to the major changes in journalism and publishing in recent times.
“At UNESCO, we have very different countries as members, with different approaches to journalism – but one thing that, at least, they all agree on is that journalists should be well-trained,” Director of Strategies and Policies, Communication and Information, UNESCO, Guy Berger, said.
The week-long virtual event will provide opportunity for journalists, publishers and content creators in Africa to find out more about Google’s training programmes for journalists and news business professionals.
The event brings together experts from Google and the industry to share tools, training and best practices, from understanding how small and medium-sized news organisations can grow their digital business to how to use consumer insights and data to better understand reader preferences and increase profitability and engagement.
Google has held two successful innovation challenges where it supported 43 GNI projects in 18 countries.
