Development journalism is stronger when it is collaborative. In 2025, we partnered with organisations that share our commitment to accountability and amplification. The partnerships supported us to investigate deeper, reach wider, and tell compelling stories.
We launched a collaborative education accountability project in Oyo State with Education As a Vaccine (EVA) and the Malala Fund. Fourteen journalists across print, online, and broadcast media are investigating the barriers preventing girls from accessing safe, quality education.
Our first published investigation, Mobile Phones: How social connectivity exposes indecency among Oyo female students, documented a cycle schools cannot break: principals confiscate phones and involve parents, who sometimes destroy the devices, yet students return with new ones weeks later. Teachers reported girls prioritising Instagram followers and TikTok fame over schoolwork, older men soliciting dates online, and rising anxiety affecting performance. Nationally, WAEC withheld 9.75 per cent of exam results (192,089 candidates) for various offences, with phones among the most frequently recovered prohibited items. Despite an April 2025 state assembly ban on phones during school hours in Oyo State, enforcement varies wildly.
More stories from this project will be published in early 2026, examining school policy enforcement, child protection mechanisms, and the systemic pressures facing students and educators.
Similarly, DevReporting partnered with Moving Minds Alliance (MMA) through the Reporters for Early Age Children in Humanitarian Crisis (REACH) Network to produce “World Children’s Day 2025: As others celebrate, hungry Nigerian kids beg for alms in Benue IDP camp”. DevReporting is a member of REACH-Network, which is co-chaired by its Team Lead and Editor-in-Chief, Mojeed Alabi. The story revealed the stark reality for displaced children in Benue, while others celebrated World Children’s Day.
Our collaboration with Bird Story Agency gave us free access to African-focused stories, 11 of which were published on the DevReporting website. One of the stories, From Ejigbo to Abidjan: Nigerian women weaving trade, sisterhood across West Africa, showed how Nigerian women build informal trade networks across West African borders, demonstrating economic resilience often invisible in official development narratives.
