Atlas for Africa’s first training in Lagos focuses on budgets, sports, and government transparency
More than 20 journalists attended Atlas for Africa training sessions in Lagos, Nigeria, last week.
The first training was held in Lagos’ famous tech cluster, Yaba on June 20, and was attended by journalists from Ventra Media, a digital agency which manages the website of Guardian Nigeria, one of Nigeria’s largest newspapers.
With 11 journalists in attendance, we went through steps on how to create charts to give more depth to their stories. Ventra Media journalists were particularly intrigued by the possibility of using Atlas charts to visualize budget spending. Sports writers were also excited about using charts to tell better stories about European soccer clubs’ spending during the transfer window. Trainees also asked questions about Atlas’ open source settings and whether or not their charts could be used solely by them. Another question was if Atlas charts can be resized for other websites after being embedded.
The second session, held on June 23, in Ikeja, Lagos, saw eight journalists from various newsrooms trained as part of a data journalism fellowship run by BudgIT, a civic tech startup that focuses on data and transparency in government spending.
Given their diverse journalism backgrounds, trainees saw different possibilities of applications of Atlas charts. Hannah Ojo, a journalist with The Nation newspaper, was eager to apply Atlas charts to writing development stories, especially tracking aid. “Splashing numbers on your story may not be interesting but with charts, there’s an alternative,” she said after the training. “I like the fact that you can compare various chart types to see which fits your story best,” she added.
Across both training sessions, finding verifiable sources of data was cited as a common challenge given Africa’s general lack of emphasis on data collection and sharing — this was something Quartz data editor Chris Groskopf recently explored in a blog post. We discussed various possible sources of Nigeria-specific data as well as methods to contact and get data from local government agencies and departments. Discussions also touched on ways to detect and verify good data in a climate where unverified data is commonplace.
This blog post is part of a series written for Atlas for Africa, an initiative to bring Quartz’s chart-building platform, Atlas, to newsrooms and organizations across Africa for free, in support of greater access to Africa-focused data sources and visualization. Interested in a training session with the Atlas for Africa team? Email atlasforafrica@qz.com. Atlas for Africa is supported by Code for Africa’sinnovateAFRICA fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
