How water improves Ruwenzori’s specialty coffee in eastern DRCongo
InfoNile is a geodata journalism project, mapping stories on water issues in the Nile Basin (11 countries in Africa: Burundi, DRC, Egypt, Erytrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, and South-Sudan). It is a cross-border group of geojournalists with a mission to uncover critical stories on water issues in the Nile River Basin through data-based multimedia storytelling. InfoNile is a part of Water Journalists Africa, the largest network of journalists reporting on water issues in the African continent. I did the research, and then went into the field in an area plagued by massacres by the Ugandan Islamist rebels of the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to collect data on the ground: mapping of micro-stations, taking photos, and conducting field interviews. Afterwards, I looked for data in reports from organizations involved in the coffee sector, cross-checking them so that Code for Africa, InfoNile’s partner, could produce data visualizations. When writing the article, I carried out additional checks to ensure the accuracy of each fact reported by the various actors.