Education / News

Google unveils Third Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge winners

Google has announced 34 recipients of the third Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge.

The winners, drawn from Africa, Middle East, Israel and Turkey, were unveiled by Google in a statement on Thursday.

The recipients, among them 21 journalists and publishers from 10 countries in Africa, were selected for their promotion of diversity, equality and inclusion in the journalism industry.

The GNI Innovation Challenge is part of Google’s $300 million commitment to helping journalism thrive in the digital era and has seen news innovators step forward with many exciting initiatives demonstrating new thinking.

“This year, we sought to broaden our criteria to include digital innovation initiatives that promote goals like reader engagement, new reader income, subscriptions, disinformation among other things Following a thorough assessment, a round of interviews, and a final jury selection, 34 projects from 17 countries were chosen to receive $3.2 million in funding,” said Ludovich Blecher, Head of Innovation, Google News Initiative.

The recipients met all the five criteria requirements: impact on the news ecosystem, equity and inclusion, inspiration, innovation, diversity and feasibility.

Some of the recipients include Kenya’s WANANCHI Reporting, Nigeria’s Dubawa and South Africa’s Quote This Woman+.

WANANCHI Reporting provides features that allow both the unserved and underserved Kenyans from remote and excluded areas to tell their stories and highlight diversity in a manner that avoids misrepresentation by allowing them to contribute to the news ecosystem through their technology-driven interactive platform.

Nigeria’s Dubawa is a digital platform that helps newsrooms source and license quality images from local African photographers and photojournalists.

Starting with Nigeria, ATLAS is looking to host relevant news images and editorial images curated from local African photographers and photojournalists, which anyone can instantly download.

South Africa’s Quote This Woman+, an interactive online database solution and tool, helps journalists and newsrooms to efficiently access diverse expert sources for their news coverage.

The database provides a growing community of African women+ experts from all fields, including science, public health, economic policy, politics, education reform and environmental justice.

This year’s challenge received a total of 425 …

Crime / Military / News

Africa needs more than US military aid to defeat terror, by Muhammadu Buhari

Though some believe the war on terror winds down with the US departure from Afghanistan, the threat it was supposed to address burns fiercely on my continent. Africa is the new frontline of global militancy. Yet few expect the outlay expended here to be as great as in Afghanistan. The fight against terrorism begun under the George W Bush administration was never truly global.

Despite rising attacks across Africa in the past decade, international assistance has not followed in step. Mozambique is merely the latest African state in danger from terrorism. The Sahel remains vulnerable to Boko Haram, 20 years after its formation, and other radical groups. Somalia is in its second decade fighting the equally extreme al-Shabaab. Many African nations are submerged under the weight of insurgency.

As Africans, we face our day of reckoning just as some sense the west is losing its will for the fight. It is true that some of our western allies are bruised by their Middle Eastern and Afghan experiences. Others face domestic pressures after the pandemic. Africa was not then, and even less now, their priority. But the threat cannot be ignored. Covid-19 has been like oxygen for terrorism, allowing it to gain in strength while the world was preoccupied. Sooner or later, the reverberations will be felt beyond Africa. If extremist groups are able to hold territory, it can inspire disillusioned people living in the west to commit heinous acts of terror in their own countries. The self-proclaimed caliphate of Daesh in Iraq and Syria fulfilled that propaganda function, boosting transcontinental recruitment.

We must not complacently assume that military means alone can defeat the terrorists. If Afghanistan has taught us a lesson, it is that although sheer force can blunt terror, its removal can cause the threat to return.

The US and its western allies cannot be expected to underpin the security of others everywhere and indefinitely. Africa has enough soldiers of our own. However, more can be done to help with technical assistance, advanced weaponry, intelligence and ordinance. The US …

Lifestyle / News

Global Youth Development Index: Nigeria ranks 161 out of 181

Nigeria is ranked 161st on the 2020 Global Youth Development Index which measures the status of young people in 181 countries around the world.

Singapore ranked top for the first time followed by Slovenia, Norway, Malta and Denmark, the report on Tuesday said.

Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Niger came last respectively.

The index further revealed that the conditions of young people have improved around the world by 3.1 per cent between 2010 and 2018, but progress remains slow.

The Commonwealth Secretariat on Wednesday released its triennial rankings of youth development in 181 countries, with 156 of them recording at least slight improvements in their scores.

While the data used in the index pre-dates COVID-19, the report highlights the positive trajectory of youth development which the virus could reverse for the first time unless urgent action is taken to secure the pre-pandemic gains.

Key highlights
The index ranks countries between 0.00 (lowest) and 1.00 (highest) according to the developments in youth education, employment, health, equality and inclusion, peace and security, and political and civic participation.

It looks at 27 indicators including literacy and voting to showcase the state of the world’s 1.8 billion people between the age of 15 and 29.

Afghanistan, India, Russia, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso were the top five improvers, advancing their score, on average, by 15.74 per cent.

On the other hand, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon showed the greatest decline in youth development between 2010 and 2018.

Global trends
Overall, the index shows advances in youth’s participation in peace processes and their education, employment, inclusion and health care since 2010.

Health made the largest gains of 4.39 per cent driven by a 1.6 per cent decline in global youth mortality rates and a 2 per cent drop in each HIV, self-harm, alcohol abuse and tobacco use.

Sub-Saharan Africa made the greatest strides in improving the health of young people.

Levels of underemployed youth and those not in school, training or work remained constant.

Advances in equality and inclusion are led by …