Since Connected Development (CODE) launched its $5 million Artificial Intelligence (AI) media project, dubbed AI-Dev, to empower Nigerian journalists on how to engage with citizens and ensure that they are mobilised to push for the inclusion of AI in the post-2030 development agenda, the public is still awash with the news of this scheme and wants to know how it’s going to impact and transform the media landscape across the country. In this interview with Etta Michael Bisong, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the non-profit organisation dedicated to accountability and transparency, Malam Hamzat Lawal, sheds light on the basket fund’s purpose, particularly how donors can utilise the programme to further their objectives
What is the CODE AI project all about?
CODE is Africa’s leading civil society organisation that empowers marginalised communities. We do this by creating platforms to inform the government and citizens while holding the government to account for the citizens. For the past 13 years we have used innovative tools and approaches in engaging citizens. We also leverage our strength of convening events and partnership with the media, which has the capacity to reach out to the masses of our people.
I will be happy to mention here today that Nigerian journalists should be proud and take ownership of the success that we have achieved over the years. It is through them that we have been able to achieve what we have been achieving.
Now, talking about this initiative, the landscape of the entire conversation is now on artificial intelligence (AI). Before now, the conversation was around data. This is something we even took to the World Bank. I remember I was in Washington D.C. in 2014, meeting with leaders, informing them about policies around open data and how citizens can get data and how the World Bank is investing across the African continent. From Open Data, we went to Big Data, which has to do with how giants like Facebook and X are taking data and using it. How some machine learning algorithms are biased and how we would engage stakeholders to do fact-checking on misinformation, disinformation, etc.
Today the world is talking about AI. To jump into it, first, we said, Let’s even hear from the media practitioners – journalists, editors, newsroom managers, and investigative journalists from different spectrums, whether print, online, or broadcast – and hosted a roundtable, and we got insights and feedback about some of their challenges and how we can work together to have the challenges resolved. You can hardly see a journalist seated at a roundtable – he is always busy chasing stories. But we were able to bring them together. As we brought them together, we worked on a six-year strategic plan – 2024 to 2030.
As we are now in 2025, it means that we now have 5 years to achieve our target, which is how we do properly embed the media in the development value chain. How do we empower them with the right skills, tools and other resources that they need to seamlessly and satisfactorily carry out the tasks required of them? We launched the $5 million basket fund to take care of all of these. We will be disbursing $1 million every year until 2030.
Are other African countries captured in this scheme?
No, it is solely for the Nigerian media. The Nigerian media made CODE what it is today. So this is a way of giving back. This basket fund also creates an opportunity where donors can invest their money because it is an impact-investment initiative. We will have a board for it; we will have the management team that looks at the pitches and the criteria that must be met before the fund is awarded.
The donor landscape is changing; every donor is now going into technology and innovation and how it is affecting young people, particularly Gen Z, but a lot of them have no grasp of how to go about it; we have a platform, and we will ensure that it tallies with your vision and mission.
What are CODE’s expectations from this noble initiative?
Showing appreciation to journalists for their work over the years. And giving our work a wider reach because journalists can mass-educate and mass-inform the people using AI. In our work, citizens are at the centre, and given that Nigeria has deficits in telecommunications and technology, journalists are the right and sure bet.
How do we put citizens at the centre? It is journalists that have to create that awareness and consciousness so that citizens can increase and drive demands. The government can budget and use those resources as investment, and as they do that, journalists would continue to investigate how the government is going about it, how the resources are being utilised, and how the contracting procedures are being undertaken in a way that the citizen will be at the heart of it. When we say citizens should be at the heart, it means power should go back to the people. If there is more investment in infrastructure, citizens can give feedback in real-time where AI can analyse it and give government feedback about what the people or their communities need.
Now there is a service industry where a lot of other economies are looking for skilled labour, through which, for example, you can be in Nigeria and earn foreign exchange (FX) from the United States. We are thinking of exploring it to the benefit of our people and helping in boosting the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
As I already said, the basket fund is also a way of giving back to the press because of the tremendous things they did and are still doing to make CODE what it is today. The fund has been launched. We are now talking to partners across the board; I will also be going on a tour to meet more partners. We will be starting capacity trainings soon. We expect some of the pitches to be on capacity building for journalists on various aspects of journalism.
Ideally, the basket fund focuses on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), health, and other areas that address climate change. To make sure the initiative is carried out seamlessly, CODE has appointed a consultant, a seasoned journalist with vast knowledge in the sustainable development space, to oversee all of the processes and to ensure that the gaps between the civil society organisations (CSOs) and the media are bridged.
How long does your organisation intend to implement this programme?
It is going to run for five years – between this year and 2030. We hope that this influences what becomes the next development agenda. As you already know, from 2000 to 2015, it was Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 2015 to 2030, we have Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I was among the young leaders who informed what the post-2015 development agenda became when I met with Ban Ki-moon in 2014.
He met with 10 young leaders from across the world, and I was one of them. We sat across the table with him to engage on climate actions and how citizens can mobilise around the post-2015 development agenda, which is still ongoing. So we are hoping that our initiative of working with journalists should be part of what becomes the next development agenda.
Can you explain how this exercise will promote the independence of the Nigerian press?
One thing we also want to counter is the mindset of the people towards the media. If you look at the spectrum of the media and the newsroom, I think the society itself is not fair to the media. A lot is expected from them, and they deliver. Because when you meet an average journalist, their passion and commitment towards the job are what drive them. Barely is there again in it. The job is a calling, just like imams and pastors because it is the passion that drives them. I know many journalists who are not being paid. The job has no hazard allowance, despite the fact that it is highly risky. Some of them die on the job without anyone helping their families.
We are hoping to tackle some of these challenges with this initiative. In other climes, I was shocked to learn that government budget money goes to journalism organisations so that they can report independently without any backroom negotiation for control. But in Nigeria, the case is different. If you carry a story the government officials do not like, you would probably lose your contracts. So, this fund will help journalists tell the real stories because they have everything they need.
We will be having a roundtable with media owners , the government and regulators of artificial intelligence, the private sector, and then with the journalists on the field themselves as part of the initiative. We also want to have a roundtable with Gen Z to engage them on how they are using AI, what the gaps are, what the advantages are, and how we can work together to optimise things.
What are your plans for leveraging this project to improve the technical capacity of Nigeria’s media?
We will be doing a needs assessment across various media houses to identify their gaps and see how we could come in. We will come up with a questionnaire to work with. We also plan to take Nigerian journalists to other countries so that they will go and experience how the job is being done there. We will be considering Europe and America.
After we have disbursed and they have done some work, we will consider hosting a conference to showcase the works in order to share with various stakeholders.
Is this CODE’s first attempt at incorporating AI into its operations?
CODE is not new to AI. During the last election, we deployed an AI tool through which we were able to get a midday report and analysis in real-time. And that was why we were the first CSO with a report of what happened even when voting was still ongoing.
We want to build on that in other elections. We deployed the same tool in Liberia during their last election. We did the same in the U.S. when we monitored the election that brought Donald Trump into office.
What other initiatives does your organisation have in place to encourage sustainability?
We are at the moment heavily invested in climate change. We launched the Ewah Eleri Climate Change Fellowship programme, where for the past five years we have been supporting at least five journalists every year to attend United Nations’ conferences on climate change to report what negotiators are doing and what world leaders are committing to. We select journalists that are working around environment and climate change matters.
We are currently going into interfaith dialogue to bring in clerics to help us come up with scriptural messages that will help in enlightening people on the effects of climate change. We are now in a crisis because a lot of people don’t know what climate change entails. In view of the fact that a mass of our people listen to clerics, we will use them to get messages to the people on effects and how individuals can take action.
Can you tell us more about Follow the Money (FTM) and its impact since its inception?
Our Follow the Money campaign is now in 12 African countries. We have over 35 thousand young people on our platform. We are hoping to conquer Africa before 2030. In each of the 12 countries, we have secretaries-general and country directors. We are hoping to host an African-wide Follow the Money at 15 in 2027 in Abuja, where it started.
Given the country’s digital divide, how does your organisation interact with people in remote areas?
Follow the Money started in a rural area in 2014, in a community known as Bagega. I went on a motorbike. It took me four and a half hours to get there from Anka in Zamfara State. In Bagega at that time, there was no mobile network; it was a forest, and they got their drinking water from a stream. It was as if civilisation had left them behind. But, today, because of our intervention, there is a dual-carriage tarred road to the community. There is now potable water and telecommunication networks.
They even have state-of-the-art primary schools equipped with computers that are connected to the internet. Today, we have Follow the Money volunteers in all the 36 states and in over 400 LGAs. We want to conquer all the LGAs in the country so that we can cover everywhere.
What has been the government attitude and response towards the activities of CODE?
Before now, we were not having the needed support. But now we have the officials in our town hall meetings and stakeholders’ engagements.
Can you describe your obstacles?
Access to some communities because of the pockets of insecurity and access to data. That is why we sat down with the Minister for Budget and Planning and the Director General of the Bureau of Statistics to see how they can access our own data because we also generate and collate data. We also want to access their data, analyse it and make it attractive and understandable to the citizens so that they would learn what the government is doing.
We also engage with an aide to the president on policy, Hadiza Bala Usman, in ways of exploring collaborations.
With the announcement of this life-changing endeavour, what advise would you give Nigerian media practitioners?
My message to the Nigerian journalists is that they should remain resilient. I also want to thank them for their commitments and their role in shaping the narrative of democracy. It is my hope that their works will even outlive them, and their names will be written in gold when the history of our country is written someday.