By Mohamed Abdimalik, 26 July 2021. Listen to an accompanying Somali-language podcast for this blog post here [Af Soomaali].
In early 2015, a civil society colleague invited me to speak to a small gathering of journalists in Mogadishu about how to find and use data in their reporting. The event opened my eyes to the shocking disparity between the data-driven development sector (where I was working at the time) and the data impoverishment of Somali media outlets. To help bridge these data and digital inequalities, I began to build, share and visualize open datasets and train local journalists. In this blogpost, as part of the Datafication and Digital Rights in East Africa network, I will explore the limitations and potentials of news datafication in the context of Somalia. This ties into some of the bigger themes of this network around the role of data in opening-up or constraining rights to public information that inform debates in the region.
Currently, newsrooms around the world are experiencing an uptake in data use, more commonly referred to as data journalism. However, the media in Somalia has not yet embraced the data revolution. In fact, the regular news diet in Somalia is almost entirely bereft of data or any form of explainer visuals such as infographics, charts, maps and other illustrations. Elsewhere in East Africa, data driven journalistic practices are taking root. Innovative media outlets, such as the Daily Nation’s Newsplex, PesaCheck, Nukta Habari and others, are effectively appropriating data and digital tools to produce award winning data stories, to fact-check, verify news claims, fight fake news and misinformation. Data visualization is a powerful way to convey complex and important stories hidden in the data. In contexts similar to Somalia, journalists have used data-based reporting to shine light on corruption and challenge official narratives. Contextualized news analysis supported by data can also help to offset the sensationalized gloom and doom of Somali news, restore faith and mend long-eroded trust in media reporting.
The Somali Media Landscape
Journalists in Somalia face a unique mix of long-standing structural barriers impeding innovation and growth, both at sector and individual levels. Despite limited reforms introduced by the amended 2016 media law, the media environment in Somalia remains repressive and dangerous. Government authorities routinely use outdated and punitive Siad Bare-era penal codes to enforce censorship. Intimidation, arrests, murder and co-optation through corruption is widely used to stifle critical stories.
The media system in Somalia is also made up of a large number of small, politically fragmented and poorly resourced outlets. Farah Nur, the Secretary General of Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ), a media rights organization based in Mogadishu, noted that most stations “lack adequate computing facilities and the technical know-how”. Only a handful of media houses have the capacity to hire and retain qualified journalists. In addition, cross-media collaborations and partnerships are rare. Journalistic education in Somalia is still nascent. Hence, the quality and quantity of media output is below standard compared to counterparts in the region. In 2017, and after nearly 3 decades, the Somali National University relaunched its journalism school. Still, continued violations of media ethics and journalistic preferences for sensationalized news has given rise to the spread of fake news and misinformation.
Challenges and Opportunities
The lack of data and access to information are some of the most acute challenges facing journalists. Goobjoog, a private media company based in Mogadishu, is among Somalia’s first daily news websites to experiment with infographics. In 2015, looking for new and creative ways to cover the 2016/17 election, the media house created an infographic desk to produce visual content such as charts and other illustrations on key election facts and figures. Hassan Mohamud, Goobjoog’s Manager, says that after the election, they “continued to create infographics on topics such as the budget, security trends and the economy.” However, lack of access to government data had significantly curtailed their efforts to factually inform the public, including at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Hassan says that “our COVID-19 coverage was used to detain our editor, Abdiaziz Gurbiye and as a pretext to hide data from us.” The Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) published a report in July, which described the government’s denial of access to information as “enforced secrecy” that negatively impacted media “efforts to raise public awareness to save lives” and allowed “disinformation and fake news to flourish”.
Due to limited state capacity, Somalia is currently produces limited official statistical data. The World Bank ranks country’s statistical capacity among the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts to re-establish national statistical systems are underway. In the meantime, the main data producers are the international NGOs or UN agencies and a host of private sector players, largely telecoms and financial service providers. Driven by funding pursuits or profit, these non-state actors regularly collect, with unfettered access, a wide variety of raw data. Unfortunately, the vast data they collect is largely kept in-house, often single-use, and is rarely available for access or reuse by others. A wider culture of open data is still lacking given the absence of relevant legal and regulatory environments for access to information. In Feb 2016, Somalia’s then President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud launched the now defunct open government initiative, which included a raft of “transparency, accountability, and participation” initiatives such as the currently inactive data.gov.so portal (no new datasets have been added to this portal since 2018).
Another significant barrier is the widespread lack of data and digital literacy in newsrooms. The majority of the media outlets in Somalia are small, under-staffed & resource-constrained. Hence, they are unable to allocate the financial resources hire data specialists or purchase the digital infrastructure necessary to conduct, host and present data stories. In addition, due to political fragmentation, media outlets rarely collaborate or share skills to overcome these problems.
Despite these challenges, there are some important flickers of opportunity – chiefly, the growing digital presence of Somali news sites, the rise of civic-minded collectives and public hunger for data driven investigative stories. In spite of (or inspired by) longstanding government efforts to control information, Somalia’s highly networked society is extremely thirsty for in-depth data-based investigative reporting. The growth of internet and social media has enabled a number of independent journalists to use new media and digital tools to circumvent censorship and produce high quality, well received investigative stories.
Another noteworthy opportunity is the rise of civic-minded communities and local think-tanks such as Somali Public Agenda and others on news production. These organizations are now leading the shift in defining the social reality of the Somali people increasingly through a data lens. The interplay of these research organizations and media outlets results in a stream of data and charts being featured regularly in online news sites.
In the past few years, data and tech conferences (including hackathons) have become a regular fixture across many Somali towns, attracting large crowds. The Open Knowledge Foundation’s Somalia chapter (OKFNSO) has been organizing annual open data festivals and workshops to help journalists learn about and utilize open datasets and digital tools. “Our work with Somali journalists is aimed at building data literacy using low-tech, beginner-friendly and visualization centered approach” explains Mohamed Harbi, OKFNSO Chairman. Numeracy training and external funding opportunities (in the form of small media grants) are also increasingly becoming available to improve the ineffective media coverage of quantitatively oriented sectors such as government budgeting and development programs.
Two case studies – data and visualization
The two case studies below, from my own work, highlight the challenges and benefits of building, sharing and visualizing open datasets in Somalia.
Example 1: #KalaWareeg – Mapping Police Violence Against Bajaaj Drivers in Mogadishu: In April 2019, in response to the rise of police shootings against Bajaaj drivers, I began to curate a victim level database using open-source information. Violent road rage is common in Mogadishu. Soldiers escorting VIPs often fire indiscriminately to force their way in traffic jams. Customs police (aka Minishiibiyo) maintain checkpoints where they extort motorists. Despite the repeated protests for justice, almost none of these perpetrators are held to account. The frequency and scale of the problem also remains unknown given the lack of publicly available crime and traffic incidents register or reports.
Given the lack of official data, I created a standardized spreadsheet to record shooting incidents using news websites. First, I used internet research to populate an initial list of past incidents going back as far as 2015. Secondly, to capture new incidents, I use a combination of targeted internet search and Google’s Alert feature to monitor the web and record news headlines bearing the keyword “Bajaajle”. Using Somali news websites to collate incident records is a demanding task. News sites often do not report incidents. The news text often misses some important details such as the precise location, date, time, victim’s name and suspected perpetrator(s). Acknowledging potential data quality issues, the resulting map of police violence used location analysis to show a compelling evidence that majority of these deadly encounters occurred at government designated police checkpoints.
Example 2: Somali Budget – This is an open budget data project aimed at making accessible timely and analysis-ready budget data. Budget misinformation is on the rise in Somalia fueled by lack of factual analysis and coverage by mainstream media. Hampered by innumeracy and inadequate understanding of the federal budget and its processes, the media outlets gave way to politicians and outrage influencers who peddle fake news and misleading rhetoric on budgetary allocations. These discussions are recast through clan lenses, causing unfounded uproar and confusion in social media sites.
Somalia’s Ministry of Finance publishes the annual budget data in PDF, usually, some weeks after obtaining parliamentary approval. This means that, first, the budget information is not available in time for media scrutiny and public discussions. Secondly, PDF tables are excellent for presentation but cumbersome for data analysis purpose. To make the Somali budget accessible and useful, I use an open-source software called Tabula & MS Excel to extract budget tables from PDFs, clean and compile them into an analysis ready format. The resulting product is an open dataset that features an easy-to-use metadata, allows quick sector, agency and cost category comparison as well as trend analysis. The next steps for this project are: to expand the dataset to cover more past years and state level budgets, to create ready-made and shareable charts, and to deliver trainings to help journalists navigate budget information.
Conclusion
In Somalia’s politically fragile environment, data driven reporting can help infuse much needed objectivity and dispel increasingly widespread misinformation in the national conversation. The lack of basic data and digital skills is the most acute barrier facing journalists. To reduce the wide digital inequities, there is a strong argument that state and nonstate actors should embrace open data culture, invest in new and innovative data sources such as crowdsourcing platforms, foster data partnerships to open-up and share private sector data for public uses. In recent years, the need to address humanitarian crises and the Covid-19 pandemic has encouraged some actors (such as the Somali Federal Government and diaspora activists) to innovate and invest in online platforms to visualize data from dynamic situations. There may be scope to bring this expertise into conversation with journalists to strengthen the Somali media’s data literacy and explore new collaborations that effectively encourage accessible data-driven approaches to news and public information.
Mohamed Abdimalik is a journalist, open data activist and the founding director of FESOJ Disinformation Lab.