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How we are funded

Diversity and transparency of funding

As a leading supporter of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and its Code of Principles, Africa Check is committed to transparency about our funding and organisation.

Africa Check is a non-profit organisation, headquartered in South Africa as a non-profit trust, registration number IT000728/2015(C). It is registered as the Africa Check Foundation in Kenya and operates in Nigeria and Senegal through representative offices. 

Founded in London in 2012 as a Community Interest Company, control of the organisation passed to the South Africa-registered trust at the start of 2019. Information on our accounts from 2012 to 2018 accounts is available on the UK Companies House website. From 2019 our accounts are published in South Africa.

We launched in 2012 with just one funder, the Vienna-based International Press Institute. Our commitment since then has been to increase and diversify the number of our financial supporters, to ensure no donor has a controlling influence. 

In 2014, a small group of foundations and trusts provided 100% of our income. That group had grown and diversified, and by 2020, earned income and corporate sponsors accounted for 42% of our income. As verified by the IFCN’s independent assessment of our work each year, we ensure that funders have no influence over the conclusions we reach in our reports.

Africa Check’s work is supported by TRi Facts (PTY) Ltd, our research and information subsidiary, registered in South Africa under enterprise number 2018/623180/07.

Our funders 2022

The breakdown of income by source is below, rounded to the nearest percentage.

 

We are also grateful to the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the EJICOM journalism school in Dakar for the continued support in hosting our teams in South Africa and Senegal.

Putting Africa Check on track for the future

We want Africa Check to be around for a long time. This will ensure we can continue to play our part in scrutinising the claims that public figures, institutions and the media make, and supporting others who do the same.

To do that, we need to put our finances on a sound long-term footing. As a first step, we launched TRi Facts, our research and information subsidiary, in 2015. 

We also reach out to our readers and supporters for their donations

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