Media Newsletter – December 2025
Dear reader Our final issue of 2025 features two career changing funding and training opportunities. Plus, you'll find out what makes Scovian Lillian an award-winning journalist. 
1. Journalism trends: There's little doubt that 2025 marked the moment artificial intelligence moved from the margins of journalism into its core. What was once limited to transcription, spell-checking, and headline suggestions is now embedded across the newsroom workflow — from research and translation to analysis and distribution. Across Africa, this shift is beginning to level the playing field. Journalists are using AI to translate stories across languages, analyse lengthy reports and court documents more quickly, and adapt a single piece of reporting into multiple formats for digital, social, and audio platforms. Beyond efficiency, AI also enables more contextual journalism. By surfacing patterns, background information, and gaps in coverage, it supports deeper reporting on complex issues. This is where purpose-built tools like Africa Bias Buster matter. By going beyond workflow support to address how stories about Africa are framed to support more balanced, contextual, and accurate storytelling about the continent. 
2. Who's funding: Are you interested in covering polio stories? Apply for the Polio Press Fellowship for Individual Reporting; offered by the United Nations Foundation. Fellows will receive up to $7000 in funding to travel independently to a country at the forefront of the polio eradication to produce stories and interviews with polio survivors, health care workers, community members, families, and health authorities. Applications must include a budget proposal with a cost breakdown for transportation, visa fees, accommodation, interpretation, and other travel expenses. Fellows will attend mandatory virtual training sessions in March, while reporting trips must be conducted by mid-September. Preference will be given to reporters interested in traveling to Angola, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Namibia, and Nigeria. Deadline: 7 Jan 2026. More info. 
3. Training opportunity: Are you a reporter, writer, editor, producer, illustrator, filmmaker, or photojournalist with at least three years' experience reporting on science, health or environmental issues in Africa? Apply for the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship for Advancing Science Journalism. Benefits include spending a semester at MIT, a $40,000 stipend, health insurance, a travel and housing stipend, and full access to MIT benefits. Fellows must develop a course of study that includes at least one science course during the semester, reside full-time in the Boston/Cambridge area for the semester, and attend field trips, seminars, and required training sessions. Applicants should be proficient in spoken and written English. Deadline: 9 January. More info. 
4. In the spotlight: Scovian Lillian is a Kenyan-based independent journalist whose work is driven by a commitment to making complex scientific and policy issues accessible, human, and relevant to everyday life. Take this feature story, headlined Climate Change is Fuelling Leishmaniasis in Northern Kenya. The article, which won the Best News/Feature story at the 2025 Africa Science Journalism Awards, traces the links between climate stress, poverty, mobility, and fragile health systems while also highlighting solutions such as improved treatments, climate data, community awareness, and coordinated public-health action. Her work has been published by The Continent, SciDev.Net, IJNET, Mail & Guardian, Democracy in Africa, Nature Africa, Talk Africa, and NPR. Scovian is a Thompson Reuters Foundation trainee on Malaria Reporting and an IWMF Fellow on combating violence against women in media and politics. 
5. Stories that moved us: Meet Rebecca Zoro, the Ivorian fashion designer whose label Yhebe Design has dressed celebrities like Beyonce. Anna Libana, a seasoned energy economist, is driving Namibia towards 70% green electrification by 2030 as the director of the National Energy Fund that's tasked with equalising energy prices and financing renewable technologies. Women across Africa are fast taking up space in processing, packaging, distribution and food service businesses, driven by shifting diets as incomes grow and cities expand. In tech news - from Lagos and Nairobi to Cape Town and Marrakech, large tech events are bringing founders, investors, corporates and regulators into the same rooms, often for the first time. Analysts say these festivals are now shaping how Africa's startup ecosystem work. These stories, produced by Bird story agency, highlight Africa's progress, innovation, and opportunity. Complete the African Stories: A guide for journalists on how to tell better stories about Africa course for skills that empower you to reimagine how you tell stories about the continent. It's free and only takes three hours to complete. Follow @BirdStoryAgency on social media for more stories that represent Africa better. Media outlets that want to use bird content, for free, can contact tom@africainsight.co.ke |