Posted on: 28/08/2009
A new journalist database project to be launched September 6 at the annual Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown, South Africa, aims to provide invaluable information at no cost for African journalists.
The Ujima Project is a collection of databases, documents and other information that attempts to bring transparency to the workings and spending of African governments, multi-national nongovernmental organizations and business enterprise throughout the continent. "Ujima" is a Swahili word meaning collective responsibility.
The Ujima Project is a project of the Great Lakes Media Institute, a nonprofit journalism education group, initially formed to support the training of Rwandan journalists and the resulting Great Lakes Media Center in Kigali. The project has also been supported by Investigative Reporters and Editors, an international journalism organization based at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in the United States.
The Ujima Project is a "new experiment in journalistic transparency," according to Sally Stapleton, director of the Great Lakes Media Institute. In addition to its presence online, plans are underway to make a mobile component of the site as well.
The Ujima Project, which will be available September 6, is located online at http://www.ujima-project.org/.
