Justin Arenstein is a veteran South African investigative journalist and media entrepreneur. He is founder of Code4Africa and is behind impactAFRICA, the continent’s largest fund for data-driven storytelling.

He is an internationally recognised expert in data-driven journalism and related new media technologies. Arenstein co-founded the pioneering independent news wire agency African Eye News Service (AENS). AENS and Arenstein have received a string of international awards for their investigative exposés into government corruption and social justice issues. This includes the Knight International Journalism Award in 2000. Arenstein was also a 2009-2010 ICFJ Knight Fellow at Stanford University, where he explored social network analysis strategies for investigative journalism, as well as strategies to help independent grassroots media in Africa exploit the mobile web.

He serves as a consulting strategist on journalistic innovation for Google, and on the boards of a number of media industry entities and related press freedom bodies. He is a former member of the Press Council of South Africa, where he helped reform the Press Code and its press oversight mechanisms.