A lot of you are new here, so let’s start the year with a quick recap of who we’ve profiled so far.

When I launched this newsletter last October, I promised it would track media innovation across Africa, including how AI is taking shape in our newsrooms. I also said we’d experiment in the open and share what we’re learning along the way.

Here are the journalists we’ve profiled so far in the Journovator:

Ibrahim Shehu Adamu and his team at Media Trust Group in Nigeria set out to solve a familiar newsroom challenge: Excellent journalism trapped in silos. Their solution was a custom-built Content Management System that now connects more than 200 journalists across five brands. Production time dropped by 25 percent. Silos came down, collaboration went up. The newsroom began to function as one.

AI is woven quietly into the workflow. Human editors still make the final calls, but the workflow is more intelligent and faster.

Ayomikunle Daramola and his team in Lagos, created a tool that helps journalists find verified background information and context in seconds. The story retrieval and summarisation tool, ChatJourno, is trained on trusted news archives, giving reporters instant access to credible context while keeping editorial judgment firmly in the journalists’ hands. This innovation addresses one of journalism’s biggest challenges: delivering fast reporting without compromising accuracy.

Caleb Somtochukwu Okereke and his team at Minority Africa are teaching AI to mimic editorial judgment. They fed 2,500 archived pitches into a custom GPT to see if machines can learn what makes a story worth telling. It helped journalists test their stories before pitching editors, and reduced pitching meeting times as pitches were more streamlined and aligned to their mission. But the tool also sometimes overvalues anything mentioning minorities. The experiment is continuing.

Kgomotso Modise is an award-winning journalist from South Africa who is navigating the creator economy without institutional backing. She’s part of a new wave of news creators who are reaching audiences that traditional media struggles to reach. With a combined audience of over 300k across TikTok and Instagram, Kgomotso breaks down complex stories for her followers with her analysis, personality and a bit of humour. By day, she’s a reporter on mainstream platform EWN.

Jennifer Kaberi started Mtoto News from a dining table and a Twitter account. Seven years later, her child-led newsroom helped shift a billion shillings in Kenya's national children's budget. Could children hold the clues to reaching modern young audiences? She told me why she’s putting children in front of – and behind – the camera to tell their stories.

Grateful to these innovators for allowing us to document and learn from their work.

If you want to know how they did it, you can find their full stories in our archive. More to come in the new year!

We work with media organisations to turn big ideas into real impact — integrating AI, navigating digital shifts, and rethinking editorial strategy for the future. Curious about what that could look like for you? Let’s connect. Send me an email.