Code for Nigeria grooms reporters on digital tools

Code for Nigeria, one of the affiliate labs of Code for Africa, organised a two-day training for TheCable journalists on the use of advanced data tools for better story reporting.

The training, which would last for nine months, started on Wednesday.

The facilitators, Blaise Aboh, citizen data scientist and Onaimoh Precious, data analyst, took the participants through the use of Google tools for enhanced data sourcing and visualisations.

Urging participants to use data to tell robust stories, Aboh spoke on the advantages of data journalism.

“Data gives your story strength. It is the evidence in your story. We are in the age of big data. People selectively collect information because of time constraint. Use your numbers, tools to reinforce your story,” he said.

“When we tell stories with data, they are compelling and move people to action. Data journalism is the way to go.”

Onaimoh on his part focused on the technical use of accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to speed up the time web pages take to load.

He said research had proven that 40% readers leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

Onaimoh described AMP as a new technology building on existing one.

“It is barely two years old… it makes websites load faster and prioritises your content to users. AMP help our sites to load faster. AMP is the way to go.”