Deadline: November 23, 2025
Applications are open for the DW Akademie Dialogue Fund: Innovation and Integrity 2025. The next chapter of journalism in Southern Africa will be about how journalists and newsroom use Artificial Intelligence (AI) – in particular machine learning, generative AI, natural language programming.
The Dialogue Fund supports constructive dialogue: they are open for your ideas! They want to support hands-on, innovative solutions for reliable and balanced journalism in the public interest. You can apply for the fellowship with an idea to develop or implement a use case of AI for journalism.
DW Akademie is Deutsche Welle’s center for international media development, journalism training and knowledge transfer. Their projects strengthen the human right to freedom of expression and unhindered access to information. DW Akademie empowers people worldwide to make independent decisions based on reliable facts and constructive dialogue.
Benefits
The fellowship includes:
- a stipend of 4000 Euros
- coaching in your AI innovation and integrity project
- specialised training, if you need further skills to implement your idea
- check-ins with fellow community media innovators from Southern Africa
Eligibility
- Your idea and your participation need to be endorsed by your organisation.
- You must at least be 21 years old (or older) and have a passport (if from outside Namibia) and be able to travel to Windhoek in Namibia (travel expenses will be covered).
- You must be based in Namibia, Malawi, Zimbabwe or in Botswana, Zambia, Eswatini, Lesotho.
- You must commit to ethical journalism and its guidelines (like the core principles of the Ethical journalism Network)
Application
- Application: You pitch your idea to a selection panel.
- Selection: They will contact short listed applications for short follow-up conversations before awarding the fellowships.
- IdeaLab: One week. Refine your idea. Build a prototype. Exchange with other innovative journalism practitioners from Southern Africa.
- Build: Use the resources and coaching of the fellowship to develop your idea in practice. DW Akademie will provide seed funding as well as coaching and technical support.
- Exchange: Engage with fellow media innovators from Southern Africa and get feedback on your ideas. Join a community for innovation.
For more information, visit DW Akademie.
