Submissions to Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge now open in Africa

Google today announced that the Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge is open for application submissions in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey.

Applicants can make project submissions from now until 2 September at 23:59 GMT.

The initiative, which Google announced last year, is the company’s effort to help news players in their transition to a digital future.

Google does this through the elevation and strengthening of quality journalism, the development of business models that drive sustainable growth and assistance of news organisations through technological innovation.

A panel will evaluate Google News Initiative submissions and fund selected projects up to $150 000

The GNI Innovation Challenge is accepting proposals for projects from news organisations of every size to address increasing engagement with readers or exploring new business models in any form such as subscriptions, membership programs, and so on.

Traditional publishers, news startups and associations that aim to build innovative digital media projects are all eligible to apply.

A panel will evaluate the submissions and fund selected projects up to $150 000, with funding for up to 70% of the total project cost.

The funding will be reviewed against several criteria, including a “sharing component” — for example, a project proposal can include publishing findings or holding a public seminar to encourage applicants to share the knowledge and learnings to others.

Google claims that over the last two years it has trained more than 4000 journalists across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

More information on eligibility, rules and criteria, and funding will be published on the GNI website.

For more information, applicants can contact the GNI Project team by emailing meagnichallenge@google.com.

The GNI Project Team will also be holding an online town hall webinar session to give further information and to answer questions. This will take place on 3 July at 11am London time.

Read more: Google News Initiative Innovative Challenge to launch in Africa in June

Featured image: niekverlaan via Pixabay