CivicSignal
CivicSignal · About Code for Africa · Since 2012

Understanding Africa's digital democracies.

CivicSignal is Code for Africa's research and analysis programme — actionable insight into Africa's media ecosystem and emerging civic technology sector, built by human experts using machine learning and 'big data' resources, not replacing that judgement with them.

Who's behind this

Code for Africa: the continent's largest network of civic technology and data journalism labs.

Founded in 2012 by Justin Arenstein, Code for Africa (CfA) is a pan-African federation of civic data and civic technology organisations, registered in South Africa with teams working across some 20 African countries. Its own description of its mission: "CfA builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and which strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability."

2012founded, by Justin Arenstein
20+African countries with active teams
4regional hubs: Cape Town, Nairobi, Lagos/Abuja, Kampala
12+sister initiatives across data, civic tech & journalism
Beyond CivicSignal. CfA's wider portfolio includes PesaCheck and the African Fact-Checking Alliance (fact-checking), openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA (open-data portals), ANCIR (forensic and digital-security support for investigative newsrooms), academy.AFRICA (journalist training), and africanDRONE and sensors.AFRICA (civic sensing).
The wider network

The Plus Alliance: pooling capacity across civic tech, journalism and media research.

Code for Africa doesn't build this alone. The Plus Alliance was co-founded by Code for Africa, the International Center for Journalists and PROTO in 2024, joined by the European Journalism Centre as a constituent member in June 2026 — bringing EJC's own long-running medialandscapes.org lineage into what MediaScapes draws on. Registered in South Africa, the Alliance operates from Cape Town, Delhi, Doha, Maastricht, Nairobi and Washington, DC.

The toolkit

Everything on this site, in one place.

Each tool below covers a different part of the same ecosystem — use them together, not in isolation.

Registry

MediaData

Who owns what: outlets, ownership and reach across the continent, plus live partner dashboards like Mali's.

Open MediaData → Archive

MediaCloud

56.9M+ stories and growing — the ingestion and analysis layer behind every article CivicSignal sees.

Open MediaCloud → Model

MediaScapes

A country-by-country reading of a media system's conditions, audiences, institutions and opportunities.

Open MediaScapes → Monitor

Wavelength

CivicSignal's live ecosystem monitor — digital-native publishers, creator-journalists and push-media, tracked continuously.

Open Wavelength → Publisher view

Fingerprints

Every publisher's topical signature and engagement index, filterable by country, language and topic.

Open Fingerprints → Dark social

Push Media

Newsletters, Telegram channels and fediverse accounts — the news that never touches a website.

Open Push Media → Research

Project Oasis

The SembraMedia partnership mapping Africa's digital-native publisher ecosystem.

Open Project Oasis → Research

CNTI Creators

A survey of 42 South African creator-journalists, with CNTI and Project C.

Open CNTI Creators → Experimental

Lab

Open experiments and unconventional methods, tested against real media data before they ship.

Open Lab →
Sources

Code for Africa background: codeforafrica.org, Wikipedia (Code for Africa), and CfA's GFMD member profile. CivicSignal positioning and tool descriptions: civicsignal.africa. Plus Alliance and partner details as published elsewhere on this site.

The map is moving. CivicSignal is how you keep up with it.

Investigate the full spectrum of Africa's media landscape — from legacy broadcasters to digital-native newsrooms, creator-journalists, and the newsletters and channels that never touch a website.

Connect to CivicSignal
CivicSignal · Code for Africa ← All CivicSignal pages