Northern Nigeria’s leading investigative and accountability journalism platform, WikkiTimes, through its media development arm, the WikkiTimes Media Foundation, has announced the launch of the Anas Aremeyaw Anas AI Accountability Fellowship (A3AIA).

Designed to strengthen investigative reporting on extractive industries, environmental degradation, and resource injustice in under-reported communities across Northern Nigeria, the specialised journalism fellowship responds to the rapid expansion of mining and extractive activities in Nigeria, particularly in Northern states, which has increasingly exposed communities to illegal mining, environmental destruction, resource theft, displacement, and weak regulatory oversight.

Despite the scale of these challenges, reporting on extractive-sector abuses remains limited, largely due to capacity gaps and restricted access to advanced investigative tools among local newsrooms.

The A3AIA Fellowship, inspired by the fearless investigative legacy of renowned Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, was conceived to bridge this gap by equipping journalists with cutting-edge digital, data, and artificial intelligence tools to strengthen public-interest reporting and accountability.

The programme will support journalists from local and regional newsrooms, with priority given to reporters working in extractive-affected states.

Targeting journalists across the 19 states of Northern Nigeria, the fellowship will train participants to deploy artificial intelligence, open-source intelligence (OSINT), geospatial analysis, satellite imagery and evidence-based storytelling to uncover and document extractive-sector abuses and governance failures.

Fellowship Structure

The fellowship will run for six months in two phases.

The first phase will consist of three months of intensive training covering AI-assisted journalism, satellite imagery analysis, digital verification, safety and extractive-sector reporting.

The second phase will focus on a three-month practicum during which fellows will receive close editorial mentorship to produce in-depth investigative reports.

Statement from WikkiTimes Publisher

Speaking about the fellowship, Publisher of WikkiTimes, Haruna Mohammed Salisu, said,

“We chose to name this fellowship after Anas for a reason that goes beyond admiration. We need a symbol of courage and resilience that can genuinely inspire young reporters in the region. Apart from Anas’s history of fearless journalism, he gave us an additional symbol of courage and resilience last year in Gombe.

We invited him to a conference co-hosted by WikkiTimes and Northeastern University, Gombe. He missed his flight from Abuja to Gombe a day before our conference, yet he refused to back out. Instead, he set out by road at 10 p.m., travelled through one of Nigeria’s most dangerous routes, and arrived in Gombe at 3 a.m. all to speak to our participants at 10 a.m. that same morning.

He took that risk because he believed the young people we brought together deserved to be encouraged.”

“His presence motivated dozens of emerging journalists, including students from the Federal University, Kashere, and Northeastern University, Gombe, who were part of the participants at the event,” Haruna said.

Mohammed said the programme’s spirit is built on the examples, courage, creativity, and fearlessness Anas represents.

“We need to help our society by instilling in people, especially our journalists, these kinds of values. That spark that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan talked about in Anas is the same spark we want to light in young reporters who are working in these forgotten places across northern Nigeria,” the publisher added.

Mohammed said WikkiTimes is committed to training journalists prepared to interrogate systems of extractive abuse and environmental injustice. He said Anas Aremeyaw Anas has demonstrated courageous, evidence-based journalism.

Through this fellowship, WikkiTimes aims to support reporters to expose wrongdoing and amplify the voices of vulnerable communities in line with core values that define the medium.

Fellowship Benefits

Selected fellows will receive editorial mentorship, a monthly stipend, and access to digital investigative technologies, and will work with WikkiTimes to complete at least one investigation.

They will also receive a certificate of completion, signed by Anas.

For inquiries, contact Hafsah Ibrahim at hafseemuhammad@wikkitimes.com