AfriLEAKS, a secure anonymous whistle blowing platform for African nations will be formally launched first in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa respectively in the next few months according to Ruth Kronenburg, the Director of Operations at Free Press Unlimited, one of the partners in the joint project. Ruth was speaking at a session in the just ended Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany.
Afrileaks is run by an alliance of African news organisations that are committed to speaking truth to power. The site whose concept was greatly WikiLeaks was set up early this year. Unlike the longer established Wikileaks, the Africa version won’t release secret information directly to the public, according to Khadija Sharife of the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) – the organization that hosts the platform.
“[AfriLeaks will] provide a secure tool for connectivity between the whistleblowers and the media who then investigate the substance and character of the leak,” she told Deutsche Welle in an interview ahead of the launch.
According to the DW article, whereas the aim of Wikileaks has been to publish and disclose information, AfriLeaks is there to provide leads for stories to media and research organizations. The new platform will allow whistleblowers to choose the media or research organization to which they want to send the information.
Whistle blowers can send documents and select which of the AfriLeaks member organisations should perform an investigation.
During the Global Media Forum workshop titled Digital Media, citizen Journalism and whistleblowing: overcoming the challenges of national security and corporate capture in 2015, Ruth together with fellow panelists spoke about other similar initiatives to AfriLeaks that have been setup elsewhere such as the successful MexicoLeaks site. Ruth disclosed that AfriLeaks is modelled along the lines of Europe’s GlobaLeaks with the aim of making whistle-blowing safer and that the site guarantees the whistle blowers safety by use of leaking tools such as TOR and secure drop.