Voices Project

A global-first in voice-powered citizen media

Impact at a Glance

Long before the mainstream adoption of smart speakers and AI assistants, the Voices@Al Jazeera initiative pioneered voice-based civic engagement at global scale—enabling communities without access to smartphones or broadband to participate in journalism using nothing more than a basic phone call.

Launched in 2012 under the leadership of Derrick Fountain, the project marked Al Jazeera’s first nonprofit partnership and was backed by a strategic grant from the World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The end-to-end effort spanned product design, funding negotiations, technical architecture, and field deployment—driven by a mission to expand media access in underserved regions.

The first pilot launched in Ghana during the December 2012 elections in partnership with Airtel. A toll-free IVR system was deployed, allowing citizens to call in, listen to curated bulletins, and leave voice reports in real time. Outreach included SMS campaigns to over 6,000 users and radio ads across seven local stations. A multilingual moderation interface supported the system, which recorded 2,152 calls and 480 citizen reports—25 of which were published globally on SoundCloud.

Building on this success, a second deployment launched in Kenya during the 2013 presidential elections. This pilot—delivered in collaboration with Safaricom, Kibera TV, and NYSA—introduced new moderation workflows, localized content, and a more robust technical framework. It generated 2,046 calls and 606 user reports, with 127 ultimately published—representing a fivefold increase in published content over the Ghana pilot.

The underlying platform was modular, multilingual, and built using VoiceXML on a LAMP stack. Privacy safeguards, editorial workflows, and rating tools were implemented to support ethical scaling across additional geographies.

Voices@Al Jazeera demonstrated the viability of inclusive, voice-first journalism—offering a proof of concept for civic media systems that prioritize accessibility, reach, and community impact.