A group of South African journalists and civil rights organizations tackled questions such as: When and how can drones be used to improve storytelling? What are the rules that apply in different jurisdictions? This was South Africa’s first drone camp, a three-day, hands-on event in Cape Town organized by ICFJ Knight Fellow Chris Roper. The 30 participants included journalists from 12 of South Africa’s leading media outlets, and for most, it was their first time flying the unmanned aircraft.

This one-day workshop was held at the same time as the ZanSEA conference for mapping on the island of Zanzibar. We covered how to use drones for breaking news stories, collecting data, and covering difficult-to-reach places. Seven journalists from Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda attended, and will be working on developing their own drone journalism projects over the next two months.

20 African journalists (winners of the Code For Africa Impact Africa storytelling grant) came to Zanzibar for a boot camp on interactive multimedia storytelling techniques, drone use in stories, photography, social media, and much more. Their stories were on topics ranging from poor health services for pregnant women in rural Kenya to the loss of cocoa farms to illegal mining in Ghana.