African Elections Project

The flagship of this project is the online portal which provides country-specific relevant election information contributed by journalists and ordinary citizens. The portal offers up-to-the minute election news, features, live results, and analysis. The portal adopts the respective lingua franca of the countries i.e. French for Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire and English for Ghana.

The project uses short messaging service (SMS)/mobile phone applications as broadcast, monitoring, and citizen journalism tools, using FrontlineSMS and short code 1927 on all networks. According to the organisers, mobile phones have become an increasingly preferred means of communication in the sub-region due to their convenience and relatively low cost of deployment.

The project activities also include:

• training for senior editors, journalists, and reporters;
• development and dissemination of an Election Guide for the Media;
• knowledge products for the media; and
• media content monitoring

Democracy and Governance.

In the earliest phases of the project, the focus was on West African countries. According to the organisers, access to balanced and unbiased election information is often a key problem in countries such as Ghana, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire. The logistical challenges of running nationwide elections is often compounded by a lack of election-specific knowledge among local media, which can often lead to misreporting, misinformation, and - in worst-case scenarios - civil unrest. Availability of ICT tools for local journalists can also be problematic, compounding the problem still further.

Editor's note: as additional countries are added to the project, new contact details are provided for each. Information about the first 3 countries in the project is below; to view additional details about newly added countries, please click here.