JournAfrica!

JournAfrica! is Germany's first news portal for journalism from Africa. We deliver a wide range of news and articles from over 50 countries using digital multimedia.

JournAfrica! begins where the efforts of other media outlets end. Instead of working with foreign correspondents, we work with authors who are directly on location. In this way we can gain insight into everyday worlds which would otherwise remain hidden.

There are very few media outlets in the German-speaking countries which work according to this principle. We are the only one for the African continent. Indeed, it is about time this changed, for Africa is made up of 54 countries, 1 billion people, hundreds of ethnic groups and thousands of languages. Meanwhile the number of correspondents for Africa can be counted on two hands.

We do not want to be satisfied with this state of affairs: we believe that there is great demand for African stories in Germany too. Our editorial team is therefore constantly on the lookout for exciting stories and interesting journalists, bloggers, photographers and cartoonists.

Professional translators ensure that our content is also accessible in German. Together with our media partners both within Germany and abroad, we continue to develop our offer even further.

JournAfrica! is Germany's first news portal for journalism from Africa. We deliver a wide range of news and articles from over 50 countries using digital multimedia.

JournAfrica! begins where the efforts of other media outlets end. Instead of working with foreign correspondents, we work with authors who are directly on location. In this way we can gain insight into everyday worlds which would otherwise remain hidden.

There are very few media outlets in the German-speaking countries which work according to this principle. We are the only one for the African continent. Indeed, it is about time this changed, for Africa is made up of 54 countries, 1 billion people, hundreds of ethnic groups and thousands of languages. Meanwhile the number of correspondents for Africa can be counted on two hands.

We do not want to be satisfied with this state of affairs: we believe that there is great demand for African stories in Germany too. Our editorial team is therefore constantly on the lookout for exciting stories and interesting journalists, bloggers, photographers and cartoonists.

Professional translators ensure that our content is also accessible in German. Together with our media partners both within Germany and abroad, we continue to develop our offer even further.

Our aim is to have a lasting impact on the German reporting style with regard to Africa. To achieve this, we have decided on an innovative approach which we call "collaborative journalism."

Our content is aimed at internet savvy media users who wish to be informed by sources beyond the well-established news agencies. It is perfectly suited for anyone open to young online journalism.

Together with our online community, we wish to establish long-term a medium which delivers stories from Africa in a creative and multimedia way and which shows how digital foreign correspondence can work.

The JournAfrica! team has relied on unpaid volunteers so far - some of us even fulltime. Our enthusiasm has already brought us a long way: some national media outlets have reported on us and newspapers like the Frankfurter Rundschau republish our articles.

But good journalism is not free. We pay our journalists and photographers fees as a matter of course. On average this amounts to 50 Euros per article.

Our translators also rightly deserve a fee for translating our content into German. This amounts to 50 Euros per article on average.

Public funding for journalism is rare. This is why we are now turning to those whom the platform is made for: our community.

All income will go in full towards the continual running of JournAfrica! Our aim is to continue to publish at least one or two articles per week. For the payments to our journalists and translators we need at least 8000 Euros to last a year.

Should we gain funding above this level, then we will also be able to realise longer and more labour-intensive (multimedia) projects. We estimate the costs for this to be around 4000 Euros.

Over the next year we also wish to push forward with the development of an online community which should ensure the continued existence of JournAfrica! past 2016. It is already possible to contribute to the long-term financing of the project by getting sponsor or premium membership.