Olakunle Mohammed is a Nigerian journalist who covers mis- and disinformation, media literacy and inclusive media in Africa. Mohammed is a co-founder and the operations director at Media Inno Tech Limited.

Through an ICFJ program, he’s built a notable fact-checking initiative in Africa.

Mohammed is currently based in the United Kingdom.

This interview has been edited slightly.
 

How have you been involved with ICFJ over the years?

In 2022, myself and Zainab Oyiza Sanni (co-founder) participated in ICFJ’s Leap Solutions Challenge. The innovation lab gave us the opportunity to develop a product that will improve trust in news. We embarked on a 10-week solutions challenge which was insightful and learned from experts on how to build trust in news. It was a learning curve, being the only organization in the solutions challenge ideating for a fact-checking platform.

A few weeks into training, we were given the task to ideate and develop a solutions-oriented product that would build trust in news. That was how we came up with Facts Inclusive, a project that helps to make fact-checking accessible for people with disabilities (PWDs). After pitching this product to ICFJ’s Leap Innovation, we got a grant to execute the project.

Currently, the Facts Inclusive project has an animated character (Kudi), solely created to sign and interpret fact-check reports for people with hearing impairment and a redesigned News Verifier Africa website with accessibility features for people with visual impairment. 

We have also worked with ICFJ to get funding for our fact-checking platform and build our own newsroom. For the past year, Zainab and I have been working with ICFJ’s program consultant, Gia Castello, to improve our funding objectives and get technical assistance to enhance our product pitch to potential funders.

What was the biggest outcome from participating in the program? 

Facts Inclusive is the biggest outcome from participating in the ICFJ’s 2022 Leap Innovation Lab. When Facts Inclusive was launched in February 2023, it contributed to our efforts in fact-checking the 2023 general elections in Nigeria. Kudi, the animated sign language interpreter, was received positively by the PWDs community. 

The hearing-impaired community contributed to perfecting Kudi’s hand-signing gestures while the Gauri Initiative, founded by visually-impaired Comfort Ekwo, was consulted while adding accessibility features to the News Verifier Africa website.

The pilot of Facts Inclusive increased News Verifier Africa’s social media engagement by over 6,000 percent and our website visits surged by 300 percent. The hearing-impaired community in Abuja has partnered with us to produce a fact-checking course using sign language, which would not have happened otherwise. This Facts Inclusive project has been featured on IJNet, Internews, and Media Careers NG. On the heels of this positive outcome of creating news accessibility, we are developing more news products with accessibility and inclusion at the center of it.

What is something impactful you have worked on since participating in an ICFJ program that you are proud of and would want to highlight? 

Since participating in the ICFJ’s Leap Innovation Lab and launching the Facts Inclusive project, we have gone on to incorporate a media company, Media Inno Tech Limited. This is a social enterprise company that innovates inclusive, accessible and engaging news products that prioritize vulnerable groups. Under this company, we just produced the first fact-checking course in sign language, which will be launched in December 2024. This course was created to help people within the hearing-impaired community to understand the basics of fact-checking, so that they can become more vast in spotting disinformation and misinformation.

We are also working on a web app that can help people verify claims faster, like ChatGPT, and what makes this unique is that it crawls data from all IFCN-registered fact-checking organizations across the globe. So, you will only be getting verified information from reputable platforms.

Working on developing this app was made possible from the experience and skills gathered during the Leap Innovation Lab training sessions. The Innovation Lab provided us with the foundational knowledge to ideate using a Miro board, itemizing your decision-making process at every stage, including the challenges you might face in the process of implementing them and how to overcome them. Also, the experience of working as a news product manager in the 2022 solutions challenge has been a great advantage for me as I navigate being a media innovator in Africa.

Why is it so important right now to provide the kind of support to journalists that ICFJ does, especially in Africa and on mis/disinformation?

In the last decade, the surge of information disorder has grown exponentially with the rapid expansion of digital and social media. This information disorder has led to violence, sabotaged democratic and electioneering processes, and caused social unrest. In the midst of all this, the ability to critically analyse stories circulating on social media (media literacy) is eroding the public, this is because despite internet penetration in Africa, some people still do not have access to verification tools.

Fact-checking journalists and researchers also need to upskill, so that we can effectively carry out our job responsibilities, which is why ICFJ’s  support for journalists is so important. 

As a media innovator within the fact-checking space, the support rendered by ICFJ to us is invaluable because it gives us the needed expertise, knowledge and training to create a news model that works and helps to comeback the surge of information disorder on the continent.

Why did you choose to become a journalist?

I grew up reading newspapers and this influenced my passion for media, politics and governance. As a kid, I digested everything I read in the newspaper and it made me quite good at current affairs quizzes in high school, so I told myself, I wanted to be like the people who made me knowledgeable from what they wrote in the papers. And here we are now.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to an aspiring journalist?

I would not say follow your dream, that sounds cliché, but they should be true to themselves and stand for what they believe in. We live in a rapidly changing world, so they should make sure they are contributing to it with factual reporting of events and circumstances surrounding the event.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Thank you to ICFJ, for believing in us and providing us with technical support, mentoring and funding to execute the Fact Inclusive project.