Media Networks form partnership

The Mobile Web Ghana, World Wide Web Foundation and the African Media Initiative have gone into partnership with the Code for Ghana initiative to offer efficient and quality service delivery.

The Code for Ghana is a project that seeks to form a community of civic minded technologists and open data experts, and embed them into media organisations to use data driven journalism in Ghanaian newsrooms to increase and improve citizen and government engagement.

A release issued by the Project Manager of Code for Ghana initiative, Ms Florence Toffa and copied to Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, said the initiative would support the Code for Ghana to train community of civic technologists that would develop and use apps to analyse and interpret open data from sources such as the Ghana Open Data Initiative.

“These civic minded technologists will serve as catalysts and enablers who help create the internal systems and resources necessary to entrench data as a critical component of the Ghanaian newsroom culture,” the release said.

It said through the partnership, the Project was also aimed at building a movement of active citizenry by using a data driven journalism approach to create platforms for civic engagement.

It stated that the project is ready to work with civil society organisations, and government institutions that would want to transform their data sets into powerful representations using technological tools.

“Accountability is key to democracy and good governance. By supporting media organisations with innovative technology platforms for citizen engagement, Code for Ghana seeks to involve citizens and government officials in sending, receiving and reconnecting information, which will enable open, democratic governance through citizen feedback on government performance.

“This will ultimately contribute to better governance, transparency, accountability, fight against corruption and better service delivery from the government,” the release said.

The project has been made possible with funding and technical assistance from Making All Voices Count and African Media Initiative.

The Mobile Web Ghana is a non-profit organisation established in 2010 as part of the Entrepreneurs in Africa Project by the Web Foundation seeking to help individual entrepreneurs and civil society organisations to acquire expertise by providing training and using the relevant tools and applications to understand and analyse open data released by government and other institutions.

It is also working in partnership with government agencies and international organisations to build capacity and help build the different enablers for the growth of ‘Open Data services’, while the World Wide Web Foundation was established in 2009 by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners Lee, to tackle the fundamental obstacles to realising his vision of an open Web available, usable, and valuable for everyone.

The African Media Initiative is a pan African organisation that seeks to strengthen the continent’s private and independent media sector from an owner and operator perspective to promote democratic governance, social development and economic growth.

Its overall goal is to promote the development of pluralistic media as a necessary and critical ingredient of democratic governance, as well as economic and human development in Africa

Making All Voices Count is an international initiative that contributes towards effective

governance and accountability by enabling citizen engagement and open, responsive

government in 12 countries in Africa and Asia.

The initiative is committed to promoting transparency, fighting corruption, empowering marginalised citizens, and harnessing the

power of new technologies to make government more effective and accountable.