Published: 10 Mar 2023 728 views
CiFAR is a civil society organisation committed to fighting the flow of corrupt wealth by political leaders across borders and to secure the return of any stolen money to the victims of grand corruption. To do this we work closely with both civil society organisations and investigative journalists across the world to investigate, expose, and secure the return of dark money.
These flows of money affect both the Global South and the Global North. Illicitly acquired wealth is funnelled into Europe and North America, amongst other financial centres, by corrupt officials keen to hide their wealth outside of their home countries and beyond the reach of domestic law enforcement.
This money often originates from countries of the Global South, especially where political power is in the hands of the few and opposition is limited and is transferred through offshore havens to reach its destination. African countries alone lose up to $50 billion a year due to illicit financial flows, greatly exceeding the funds these countries receive in official development assistance.
Investigative Journalism plays an increasingly important role in exposing these schemes and pushing governments and prosecutors to act upon cases, both in asset originating and destination countries. CiFAR is committed to strengthening financial investigative journalism and collaborating with journalists across the globe to do exactly this.
Between 2017 and 2022, we organised four investigative journalism support programmes, training and mentoring over 100 journalists from North Africa, West Africa, Western Balkans, Madagascar and Europe. Each programme, supported by the GIZ Global Programme Combating Illicit Financial Flows, brought together a group of participants, building their knowledge on corruption, asset recovery and financial investigations, and supporting them to work in teams to develop, write, pitch and publish stories on financial crime. Read more about our Investigate Programme series here.
Starting in March 2023, we will hold the fifth instalment: Investigate – East & Southern Africa. Open to English speaking applicants from East & Southern Africa and Europe, we aim with this combination to support journalists from these two regions in developing stories that are more in-depth and more cross-regional than ever before.
You’ll spend five days in a comprehensive online training, learning and improving your skills in investigative journalism with a focus on financial crime by public officials.
Following this, we will convene an investigative journalism camp to continue training participants and facilitate planning of cross-border stories. Teams will be able to pitch for limited funding to develop their stories. Along with senior regional and international journalists, we’ll also support you to develop your stories and pitch them for publication in independent media.
CiFAR was founded in 2015 by Agatino Camarda, Laila Martin Garcia and Jackson Oldfield and formally registered as a non-profit association in Germany in May 2016. All three founders had worked in the anti-corruption field for several years, including on the issue of asset recovery and in particular in relation to North Africa. They came together to found CiFAR after realising a gap existed in support for civil society – in a broad sense – to work on cases of cross-border corruption, both in terms of understanding how the process was supposed to operate and in making connections ...... continue reading
| Application Deadline | 26 Mar 2023 |
| Country to study | Angola, Botswana, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia |
| Type | Training |
| Sponsor | Civil Forum for Asset Recovery (CiFAR) |
| Gender | Men and Women |
What we offer
1. Five days of intensive online training programme with expert trainers throughout Spring 2023 covering:
2. Participation in a four-day investigative journalism camp in Nairobi in May 2023
3. Remote Mentoring by CiFAR and international and local senior journalists to develop your story with your peers
4. Limited grants to conduct and publish your cross-border story with peer trainees and mentors
5. Support to conduct further investigations in the future and to attend international investigative journalism events relevant to your career development.
What’s covered
Accepted participants will have their costs covered for the entire programme. We will cover:
For more details, visit CiFAR website.
