MediaData is the underlying registry of Africa's licensed media houses — who owns what, what they reach, and how that changes over time. It's the foundation layer everything else on CivicSignal is mapped against, and the base CfA builds custom, partner-facing dashboards on top of for specific countries and programmes.
Where MediaCloud collects what outlets publish, MediaData records what an outlet is: its ownership structure, licensing status, and reach — mapped once by CfA's research teams and kept current rather than inferred from scraped content.
Broadcasters, newspapers, wire services and licensed digital outlets across Africa's established, regulated media industry.
Who owns an outlet, how it's licensed, and independently sourced reach figures — the fields CivicSignal's other tools reference back to.
Built through direct research rather than automated discovery, then revisited on a maintenance cycle as ownership and status change.
Pulled live from CfA's continental MediaData dashboard: 9,177 outlets across 61 countries of HQ origin, broken down by medium and ownership structure.
Emerging: podcast, social media, app, streaming & newsletter combined.
For the USAID Basiki ni Tagne Kunafoni programme — a consortium of Pact, Code for Africa and Accountability Lab Mali — MediaData was built out into a live dashboard mapping Mali's entire media ecosystem: outlets, ownership, industry bodies, and the people who staff them, refreshed on a quarterly audit cycle.
Every outlet's governance model, primary editorial medium, publication frequency and geographic reach — radio still dominates Mali's ~400 licensed stations, but the dashboard tracks online, print, TV and social-first outlets in the same registry.
Primary and secondary editorial languages down to the outlet level — Bambara, Tamasheq, Songhai, Peulh and more alongside French — the same granularity the baseline research found existing datasets lacked.
A dedicated Fact-Checking Newsrooms table inside the dashboard — AFP Fact Check, Africa Check, Benbere Verif, DjeliCheck, MaliCheck, Mopti Check and more — tracking accreditation (AFCA, IFCN, Meta's 3PFC) and editorial focus for each.
Continental figures and breakdowns are a snapshot of CfA's MediaData dashboard (Airtable) as of this page's last update — not a live feed. Mali dashboard figures are pulled from CfA's separate MediaData Mali dashboard (Airtable), audited quarterly under the USAID Basiki ni Tagne Kunafoni programme. Baseline report findings: Code for Africa / ADDO, "The Landscape: Information Manipulation & Interference in Mali" (2024) — request a copy.