We caught up with the newest cohort of the 2022 Jamlab Accelerator Programme to find out what they hope to gain from the six-month hothouse programme.

The teams are based in South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya and Liberia.

Adrian Ephraim, Newsify Africa

1. Why did you apply for the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
I have a crazy idea, and I’d like to see where it goes. I believe the accelerator programme can give me the grounding and insights needed to make my crazy idea work or at least interrogate its validity and potential.

2. What does your start-up do?
My start-up democratises the news and allows young inexperienced journalists and experienced out-of-work journalists a chance to earn a living from their craft by writing the stories that matter. My start-up also allows those who are not journalists but are engaged in the news to gain rewards by sharing good content and increasing the reach of good journalism.

3. What makes you unique?
My idea puts the power back in the hands of journalists, by allowing them to earn the most out of a story. Then a news influencer will buy into those stories and share them on social media and other platforms.

4. Who is your target market?
We have two target markets. Users and audiences. The user must find value in what we are doing for their journalism career. And audiences must feel that they are supporting good journalism by consuming our content.

5. What issue/problem do you want to solve through the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
Unemployment in the media sector. We want to develop a media platform that offers job opportunities to the hundreds of journalists who have been left jobless by the current economic conditions, as well as the mismanagement of media houses that have cut journalists’ jobs at the expense of the craft.

6. What have you learned thus far?
I’ve learned that starting a business is not easy, it’s not for everyone. In the media space starting a business is a crazy idea. But allowing the status quo to continue would be even crazier when many of us in the industry have the ability to change things up and bring new energy to the cause.

Adenike Aloba, Dataphyte

1. Why did you apply for the accelerator programme?
The Jamlab Accelerator programme offered me the opportunity to holistically troubleshoot our project from top to bottom within the safety of the support provided by the Jamlab accelerator programme and its team of mentors as well as other media innovators from different countries and contexts.

2. What does your start-up do?
My organisation, Dataphyte, is piloting a technology-enabled, citizen-powered data gathering and analytics platform to provide highly localised real-time data for journalists, researchers, governments, international and local non-governmental organisations, intergovernmental organisations, and SMEs, within Nigeria and also globally.

“GOLOKA” will provide geospatial intelligence, quality control, data analytics and visualisation to users for contextual storytelling and research. GOLOKA is citizen-powered because local ‘groundtruthers’ will form the core of primary data collectors.

3. What makes you unique?
GOLOKA offers a multi-layered value:

• On-demand data collection SaaS (Software as a Service) platform

• Highly localised, native, real-time data and intelligence.

• Geo-spatial intelligence.

• Quality control

• Data analytics and visualisation

All of these are powered by local ground truths in often hard-to-reach places that are essentially not just news deserts but often ignored in research endeavors whether it is for markets or social programs.

4. Who is your target market?
Journalists, researchers, governments, international and local non-governmental organisations, intergovernmental organisations, and SMEs, within Nigeria and also globally.

5. What issue/problem do you want to solve through the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
Through JAP, I want to thoroughly workshop the product, its market viability, brand positioning, and sustainability. I believe such interventions at the foundational stage of the product will better position it for long-term success.

6. What have you learned thus far?
I have learned that there is safety in repetition, reviewing one idea, one aspect over and over again using different lenses or parameters. Engaging in this process during the accelerator programme has exposed my biases and blindspots about my product and helped me to work through them with the help of supportive and knowledgeable mentors. Beyond the product, I have also benefitted immensely from the cohort, from encouraging and learning from each other through difficult questions to understanding the different contexts and peculiarities of each person’s environment. The start-up journey can cause a person to develop tunnel vision, singularly focused on just your product and the problem it is trying to solve but being in this cohort counterbalances this challenge. The cognitive dissonance from listening to and learning from other members of the cohort solving other kinds of problems provides insights that apply sometimes to my own product and at other times helps in broadening my horizon.

Bettie & Hanna, The Stage Media

1. Why did you apply for the accelerator programme?

The Stage Media (TSM) as a newly birthed online platform believes that in other to provide quality information through journalism with an emphasis on fact-checking, it must have innovative knowledge about its start-up; which Jamlab provides for media platforms across Sub-Saharan Africa.

We (TSM) applied for the accelerator programme to enable us to utilise the knowledge, tool, facilities, contact, and support Jamlab provides to deliver quality journalism to the Liberian population in an ethical procedure. TSM saw the process as a learning curve that was going to serve as an eye-opener to enable us to reach our potential as a new media start-up.

2. What does your start-up do?
Our start-up is heavily involved in fact-checking, data journalism, analytical stories, human interest, and anti-corruption reporting with a focus on the justice system, and investigative journalism.

3. What makes you unique?
TSM offers journalism that is rarely seen across Liberia. We are an independent body that is focused on serving the Liberian population in respect of their educational background and making them understand the value of verifying every news content before sharing it with the public on various social media platforms.

4. Who is your target market?
We target the Liberian population most especially social media users.

5. What issue/problem do you want to solve through the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
The need to bridge the inherent language gap as part of the efforts to address misinformation and disinformation is a major problem affecting an underdeveloped country like Liberia which has a high illiteracy rate. Under the Jamlab Accelerator Programme, TSM seeks to solve said age-old problem. That is the reason an innovative project titled “You Gay a The-Eye” (Did you Verify?) was designed to provide a fact-checking platform accessible to all irrespective of literacy status. With a fact-checking platform in local Liberian pidgin (Koloqua), TSM Liberia hopes to integrate investigative and human-interest stories with a specific focus on anti-corruption drives in the security and justice sector.

6. What have you learned thus far?
As one of the participants of the Jamlab 2022 Accelerator Programme, TSM has learned how to provide its business start-up in a summarised yet logical manner to donors, improve competitiveness, and learn how to structure our revenue.

Catherine Muema, The Goodheart Company

1. Why did you apply for the accelerator programme?
I applied for the accelerator programme to get the coaching and support to jumpstart The Goodheart Company a start-up that aims to provide impactful experience-driven storytelling to young audiences

2. What does your start-up do? 
The Goodheart company uses media & technology to deliver programming through innovative storytelling.

3. What makes you unique?
We provide experience-driven enterprise storytelling with the needs of the audience in mind to offer curated and customised experiences.

4. Who is your target market? 
Our target market is youth 18 – 30 years old living in Africa’s urban spaces that are looking for experiences beyond what traditional/ legacy storytelling models offer. The persona is a profile of educated, young professionals who will take action and contribute to impact as a result of the experiences they get.

5. What issue/problem do you want to solve through the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
Our lives revolve around stories.  We’ve already experienced a  digital disruption. Stories are no longer being told around the fireplace (an experience and tradition which was cherished).  As technology continues to evolve, so do our stories. We need to create new experiences for audiences as they watch the news in order to have an impact and preserve the stories of today. A report done by the Reuters Institute on 15 June 2022,  shows that there’s a growing change in the way news is consumed especially by younger audiences.

6. What have you learned thus far?
I have learned the value of doing stakeholder mapping for my start-up. It is important for me to identify the stakeholders who have a high influence in my start-up, those that I need to monitor closely as well as the ones that I need to keep satisfied.

Peters Onyilo, Advertwise

1. Why did you apply for the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
Media businesses need a certain level of camaraderie between neophytes and established players. I thought the accelerator process will bring my effort to the limelight and expose me to a new body of knowledge. The Jamlab Accelerator Programme to me should be a muster point for ideas, knowledge and funding. I have gotten the first two.

2. What does your start-up do?
Advertwise is an advertisement booking platform for organisations and media houses. It helps them to be more organised with order flow and timely delivery for customers. Users no longer have to pass through the hassles of manually reaching different media houses to book different advertisements.

3. What makes you unique?
We are unique because we are the first to make relationships between users and media houses seamless.

4. Who is your target market?
Media houses and influencers are the major targets. We also help end users directly, if they don’t have an idea of the media landscape of their chosen territory.

5. What issue/problem do you want to solve through the Jamlab Accelerator Programme?
We had a very limited social base in Nigeria. The social circle for startups keeps getting smaller for every niche of business that enters the startup space. We needed allies across the border to help us learn fast and bolster our fundraising effort.

6. What have you learned thus far?
The lesson learned so far is not to have too many expectations that can not be managed. The media space and the venture capital space change so fast. To keep your sanity, have a flexible mindset of pivoting to any business model as times and resources could have you afford.

Follow the team’s progress on the Jamlab Accelerator Programme in southern Africa by keeping up with their story’s on this platform or subscribe to our newsletter to receive these updates and more articles on innovation in journalism and media in Africa.

ALSO READ:

Jamlab Accelerator welcomes six media innovators to the programme