For the past few months, Baraza Media Lab and Carey Baraka have been talking about journalism. In particular, we have been speaking about narrative journalism, which is part of what Carey does. Journalism is hard, but narrative journalism (or longform nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, or whatever term you want to refer to it) has its own set of deep-seated problems. For people doing this kind of writing in East Africa, one has to wade through a lack of a publishing infrastructure to support this kind of writing, security fears from particular kinds of writing, research gaps, funding gaps, and editing gaps.

And so, we have decided to create a new program to mitigate some of these problems. The Hadithi Longform Nonfiction Grant is a grant for journalists and writers working in narrative journalism. The reporting costs for these kinds of stories can be extremely expensive, and so the Hadithi Longform Nonfiction Grant will work to cover some of the costs of this work. For this first iteration of the grant, we welcome ambitious stories by East African (see FAQ below for eligible countries) journalists and writers.

Grants are open to any East African journalist/writer for pieces of narrative journalism. We were welcome to both writers with an extensive history of publishing nonfiction, and those who are relative beginners to this field. The grant application period is from June 12th, 2026, to July 12th, 2026. The grant covers stories of all kinds: there are no thematic restrictions. We only ask that all stories be for narrative journalism. The grant will cover reporting costs related to the stories, as well as an additional stipend for the successful writers.