International Fund to Begin Funding Independent Nigerian Media Outlets in 2026

“By expanding IFPIM’s grant-making to Nigeria, our aim is to inject flexible financing support to independent media outlets in one of the largest and most dynamic media markets in Africa,” said Makmid Kamara, the International Fund’s Ghana-based Regional Director for Africa and the Middle East. “Independent media in Nigeria, like in many of IFPIM’s focus countries, are facing significant challenges with rising operating costs, disruptions caused by AI and big tech, and shifting news consumption habits. But Nigeria is also a hub for emerging technologies and has the benefit of young and innovative media talents. This offers huge opportunities for independent public interest media to evolve and thrive:” he said.

Nigeria’s media landscape includes hundreds of news outlets, including more than 80 locally owned digital news organizations, according to 2024 Reuters Institute data.  A shift towards news consumption on mobile devices and from social media platforms is compounding other pressures on traditional media outlets to adapt their business models.

The International Fund began making grants to independent public interest media in late 2022 with a focus on four regions. Thus far it has invested USD 6.3 million to support 19 independent media organisations across Africa and the Middle East, with two-year grants valued at approximately USD 290,000 on average.

In addition to grant support to individual media outlets, the International Fund invests in ecosystem-wide innovation for national funds to support independent media, with two notable examples in the African context: In South Africa, the Digital News Transformation Fund (DNTF) was developed with IFPIM support as a collaboration between the Association of Independent Publishers (AIP) and Google, and launched in November of 2024. In Sierra Leone, the National Fund for Public Interest Media was initiated in March of 2025 to strengthen independent journalism in the country through competitive small grants to media organisations.

Nigeria’s addition to the International Fund’s Africa portfolio is in line with IFPIM’s scale up phase, beginning in 2026. In the next three years, independent public interest media outlets in Nigeria will form part of the 300+ independent public interest media outlets that IFPIM aims to support in low and middle-income countries across the world.  

About IFPIM: Launched in 2022, the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) is a bold, new multilateral initiative designed to support independent public interest media in low- and middle-income settings. IFPIM is an International Organization hosted by France and Ghana, and supported by 19 governments and philanthropic donors. The International Fund provides grants to media organizations and ecosystem-level interventions across four focus regions: Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.

The International Fund’s mission is to ensure that people worldwide live in healthy information ecosystems, with access to journalism that provides their societies with information of public interest. To achieve this vision, the Fund aims to dramatically increase the financial resources available to support trustworthy, ethical, fact-based journalism, and to empower a resilient and independent media ecosystem that can work for democracy.

In addition, the International Fund’s mission is to foster a paradigm shift in how public interest media is resourced, with the goal of ensuring it is independent, inclusive and resilient.

To date, IFPIM has made 98 grants valued at USD 24.2 m to media organizations in 31 countries.

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