How The BBC Is Using Hackathons To Understand And Engage Africa’s Digital Audiences

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In a bid to understand and engage with digital audiences across Africa, the British Broadcasting Corporation through its international news service, BBC World Service and it’s digital innovations team, Connected Studio, recently held a two-day hackathon in Nairobi, Kenya.
This was the first hackathon organised by the BBC outside of the United Kingdom, with the aim of giving local experts an opportunity to look at the issues the BBC is facing as it aims to reach younger audiences, and come up with solutions that will best meet their needs.
For several years, the BBC has been engaging with the technology community in the UK to help them interact with their audiences better and since Africa has been witnessing a steady growth in the use of communications technologies, the BBC decided to try the same approach in the region. Last year, the BBC team visited five cities, namely, Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town and Johannesburg in order to choose a place where it would stage the first challenge.
Dmitry Shishkin (pictured above), the BBC World Service Group’s Digital Development Editor, who is responsible for developing the BBC’s digital offering for Africa, as well as working with tech start-ups on the continent to find new ways of connecting with African audiences through digital platforms, says that the Group picked East Africa and Nairobi for a few reasons, one of which is the fact the BBC’s audiences in Kenya have been increasingly using mobile devices to get to its digital content, including news.
Besides that, it makes sense since Nairobi is the main editorial hub of the BBC in Africa.
With partnership from Nairobi-based technology hub, iHub which assisted with the recruitment process, a total of 13 teams participated in the two-day hackathon event, were they wrestled with a task which had to do with social and mobile audiences in Africa.
Go Sheng
Team Go-Sheng / Courtesy: BBC Hackathon, Nairobi, Kenya
Since the aim was to select the best proposals and commit BBC resources to deliver a live pilot to audiences, two Kenyan teams — Go-Sheng, an innovative use of local language translation technology and use within local communities; and Ongair, a way of engaging with younger audiences, by understanding the daily choices that are made to engage BBC content in a concise application — were selected based on a combination of factors such as distinctiveness, audience impact, accessibility innovation and feasibility/achievability.
Team-Ongair
Team Ongair / Courtesy: BBC Hackathon, Nairobi, Kenya

“It [BBC Hackathon] was a fascinating process and it was extremely rewarding to see the whole project come off and bring tangible results.” — Dmitry Shishkin

He is also confident that the Group would continue to experiment with the idea, extending the challenges to other regions and most importantly looking to start meaningful and long-term conversations with Africa’s tech scene. “We appreciate the fundamental technical changes happening in Africa, we know how important it is to get the products and content relevant to local audiences and, crucially, we are very interested in hearing out what the experts – local tech companies – think about the best way to solve them,” added Dmitry.
With mobile data traffic expected to rise 20-fold between 2013 and 2019, which is, by the way, twice the rate in the world and smartphones expected to be sold at less than $50, Dmitry believes that Africa’s digital population will become better connected than its previous generations and its desire for connecting – with the community, country, region and the world – will grow. He further cited Ericsson forecasts showing that the number of mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa will rise from 635 million in 2014 to 930 million in 2019.
That’s why the BBC as a news organisation is poised to be faster in preparing for the fundamental shifts in the relationship with its African audience. “Hackathons are only one component to a large-scale and long-term BBC commitment to digital developments in Africa”, says Dmitry. “We have recently launched the Africa edition of BBC.com front page, making our strong editorial offer for Africa even more relevant to the local audiences.”
In January this year, the BBC launched the Africa edition of its website, offering more African news stories, features and video on the bbc.com front page, while the bbc.com/Africa section, dedicated to African news, saw significant enhancements.
The move is said to make the content more relevant to the local needs of Africans and specifically prioritising African coverage. Interestingly, over half of African browsers come to BBC.com using their mobile devices.
With a focus now on broadening the agenda, training journalists, experimenting with new formats and platforms, including a huge emphasis on social media, which are already bringing big audiences, Dmitry thinks that the next big thing, would be to leverage huge penetration of, and engagement with, chat apps.
And that’s why the news organisation is looking to hackathons like these as ‘a significant commitment’ to understanding and engaging with Africa’s digital audiences as it charts its course in the digital development of Africa.

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