The Africanist Press is launching a two-year media project to produce 100 podcast episodes and investigative reports on democracy and development in Africa, examining how global democratic shifts affect African institutions, governance, and responses. The project aims to spark a worldwide conversation on the regional and transnational impact of these changes.
The project will be implemented through the Africanist Press Podcast, a weekly audio broadcast produced by Africanist Press and sponsored by Northwestern University’s Program of African Studies (PAS).
“The series will explore how democracy and development intersect across Africa amid global challenges, clarifying how worldwide trends influence democratic institutions and development efforts while highlighting responses by African communities and leaders,” said Dr. Chernoh Alpha Bah, editor-in-chief and project lead. “We plan to produce 100 episodes and reports over 24 months, beginning with a six-month pilot phase that will produce the first 24 episodes and reports. After the pilot, we will continue with 24 additional episodes and reports in the following six months, aiming for a total of 48 in the first year before completing the remaining 52 in the second year.”
Launched in December 2023 to provide analysis of ongoing events in Africa, the Africanist Press Podcast has produced over 70 episodes on governance, human rights, social justice, and the history of the African liberation movement from the 1920s to the 1980s. With a global reach of over 5.5 million weekly listeners in at least 68 countries, episodes and reports produced through the new project will leverage new digital technologies, including social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Amazon, and other online channels.
The project also intends to create an online archive for future access by researchers and policymakers as part of its broader public-facing humanities initiative, which incorporates historical methods and investigative journalism tools to produce knowledge and scholarship that serve the academy and the world of policymaking.
The new media project, produced at Northwestern’s Evanston campus, will be led by Dr. Chernoh Alpha Bah, editor-in-chief of Africanist Press and Northwestern alumnus (PhD, History, 2023), with support from a technical and editorial team. Over the last two years, Bah has served as the inaugural postdoctoral research associate at the Africa Initiative at Brown University’s Watson School for International and Public Affairs. There, his research focuses specifically on analyzing the origins, mechanisms, and impact of illicit financial flows from West Africa between the 1970s and the present day. In addition to his research, Bah has taught seminars examining the relationship between media and nation-building in Africa for the Watson School’s undergraduate international and public affairs concentration. He also designed and taught a foundational investigative journalism course for pre-college students at Brown University’s Pre-College Summer Program.
“I look forward to working with colleagues on this new project, and I am certain that we are going to produce work that will have far-reaching impacts on various communities around the world,” Bah said.
Africanist Press is a non-profit of investigative journalists and academics founded in December 2002 to report on corruption, human rights, and democratic governance in Africa. Its journalists have covered corruption and human rights issues in Cameroon, Kenya, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. Recently, the team published about 200 reports as part of a multi-year investigation into large-scale financial crimes in Sierra Leone. This work drew international attention to governance and corruption in Sierra Leone and beyond. The new democracy project builds on this record, aiming to advance understanding of African governance and development.