The Online Academy offers free online courses for individuals wanting to develop their journalistic skills. We aim to be an educational resource and reference tool for aspiring journalists, students, and experienced media professionals.
The Online Academy is an initiative by Sudanese media house Dabanga. It has been developed together with experts in the field of mobile learning, and who have long-standing experience in teaching and curriculum development in the field of journalism.
Currently, the courses are offered via WhatsApp, with the course facilitator launching the next course in September/October 2021. The WhatsApp courses can be easily followed by anyone who has a smartphone and access to the Internet.
In the future, Dabanga will also offer online courses, in which participants can follow a course at their own pace. Find out more about the courses
ِAbout us
Initially focussing on citizen journalism*, the Dabanga Sudan team started developing its Online Academy courses in 2017. In early 2018, a pilot course ‘Use Your Smartphone’ was conducted with a group of young people in Sudan. Two days a week, participants received lessons in Arabic via WhatsApp, and communicated with the course coordinator about the assignments. In early 2019, the course was launched for a group of 100+ participants from Sudan, Egypt, Chad, and Libya.
The Online Academy is now expanding its work, currently developing additional courses, on different topics and more advances (journalistic) skills including ethical journalism and election reporting.
It is our aim to develop new courses together with academic and civil society partners – feel free to contact us if you are a Sudanese organisation or educational institute interested in partnering or sponsoring one of our courses.
* Citizen reporting or social journalism involves people in real time who report on current affairs in society or from specific events such as conferences or festivals. The reports can be factual or also contain opinions and ideas of the reporter. They may be published by a specific news outlet, but also posted online in blogs, photoblogs, podcasts, vlogs, vodcasts, or other means of reporting.