Colin Smith

Colin Smith is content director at Africa Alert, a news-monitoring service that tracks key business, economic and development topics in Africa. Africa Alert monitors news and specialist websites across Africa, as well as key international sources, to identify stories that are relevant to clients. Colin has extensive experience in the online business information market, including managerial roles for a number of leading business information companies, including Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters, Factiva and Finsbury Data Services both in UK and US. His areas of expertise include content management and taxonomy.

In addition, Colin has worked in the voluntary, health and clinical research sectors and holds a degree in economic history from Loughborough University. He can be contacted here.

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Articles by Colin Smith:


My Favourite Tipples from a specialist Africa researcher
Wednesday, 23rd May 2018

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Colin Smith of Africa Alert. As an expert researcher of news and data across the continent, Colin shares some of his go-to online tools for keeping up with developments in Africa.


News literacy - are we battling an age of misinformation?
Friday, 21st July 2017

How can organisations educate their staff so that they can distinguish between facts and social media speculation, identify a reliable source and whether there is a trade-off between the currency of news and its accuracy? Business information consultant, Colin Smith, discusses the importance of news literacy in the age of misinformation and what the various news aggregation platforms are doing to help identify inaccurate news.


Insider knowledge - researching Russia
Tuesday, 14th February 2017

Business information consultant Colin Smith shares his knowledge of researching the Russian Federation. He focuses on business, economic and trade topics and highlights key English-language sources of information.


Standards and ethics in the use of big data
Wednesday, 30th November 2016

Business information consultant Colin Smith shares his knowledge on the standards and ethics which users of big data and data analytics need to be aware of. He focuses on company, business and economic topics and highlights key sources of information published in English.


Insider knowledge - researching North Africa
Monday, 24th October 2016

Business information consultant Colin Smith shares his knowledge of researching North Africa, in particular Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. He focuses on company, business and economic topics and highlights key sources of information published in English.