Joshua Olufemi, the Founder and Executive Director of Dataphyte and Emmanuel Alawode, a Full-Stack Developer at Dataphyte have been selected alongside 44 other journalists and technologists for the 2022 JournalismAI Fellowship. JournalismAI is a project of Polis, the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science global initiative supported by the Google News Initiative that empowers news organisations to use artificial intelligence responsibly.
The fellowship received applications from 61 news organisations from 35 countries and ten teams of fellows were selected rather than five as initially planned. Explaining the reason for the increase, the Journalism AI team said that the projects submitted for consideration were very exciting and so they decided to expand the pool of fellows.
The fellows are drawn from 16 countries and Joshua Olufemi and Emmanuel Alawode of Dataphyte are the only two fellows from Nigeria and West Africa.
The fellows will work together in ten teams for the next 6 months and create projects that will explore innovative solutions to improve journalism powered by AI technologies. The Dataphyte team will work with Mads Ommundsen, and Frode Norbø, of Fædrelandsvennen to develop Nubia, an AI-powered reporter that auto-creates development reports and data insights.
The product (Nubia) will transform real-time data from satellite/web camera imagery, weather and socioeconomic data into news reports, data insights and advisory that can be distributed directly to the newsroom and general audience.
Speaking on the selection, Adenike Aloba, the Managing Editor of Dataphyte described the Journalism AI Fellowship as yet another recognition of Dataphyte’s dedication to a data and technology powered media. “We are excited about this opportunity to expand the frontiers of Dataphyte’s tech and data powered strategy. We’re especially optimistic about the Nubia project and its potential for transforming both the process and the product of news reporting.