Africa's Voices
Africa's Voices is a non-profit citizen engagement and social research organisation, helping diverse aid and governance actors reach, listen to and be held accountable by key constituent populations. Launched in 2015, Africa's Voices was spun out of CGHR's DFID-ESRC funded research on Politics and Interactive Media in Africa (PiMA) and the New Communication Technologies and Citizen-led Governance in Africa project, both of which were conducted with academics and social innovators in Kenya, Zambia and Cambridge.
Watch Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes, former CGHR research associate and the first Head of Research and Development at Africa's Voices, introduce the venture at CGHR's 5 year anniversary event in 2015.
The Whistle
The Whistle project, part of the Horizon-2020 funded ChainReact consortium, is developing an app to support the reporting and verification of human rights information from civilian witnesses. Much optimism exists around social media as a channel for the civilian reporting of human rights violations from closed contexts, such as the torrent of YouTube videos emanating from Syria. Yet the verification of this social media information takes time and expertise – and human rights NGOs must be able to verify information to use it as evidence. Dr Ella McPherson and an interdisciplinary team of researchers are developing The Whistle to support civilian witnesses in producing high quality information and human rights fact-finders at partner NGOs in verifying that information quickly and with cutting-edge technologies.