How We Created Three Frameworks in Just 91 Days

The Three-Month Sprint started as a simple two-part story.

In the first part, I looked back at the key moments that shaped my journey as a journalist. From finding Sigmund Freud’s work in the University of Calabar Library to the lasting impact of Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci, I shared how my drive to understand Nigeria's ongoing issues led to the creation of three new frameworks that are now part of global discussions.

The second part focused on new terms that came into being during the 91-day Sprint. The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of State Decay (TSD), and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI) needed fresh language because the situations they described had outgrown old categories. This piece explained the new terms, the framework of collapse it illustrated, and the hope for renewal it offered.

After spending time with both essays, I reached a surprising conclusion.

What was created in 91 days, from 8 March, when The Sunday Stew started as a column, to 7 June, when DSI was launched, seems to have few parallels in media history or knowledge production. Looking at global media history, there are not many newsrooms that created their own analytical frameworks, original theories, and measurement systems. The few that did are quite rare and important.

The Financial Times of London created its Excess Deaths Tracking Framework during the 2020 global health crisis. The data became so solid that experts and the World Health Organisation used it as a reliable scientific reference.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK faced a tough challenge. Governments were either unwilling or unable to reveal the full impact of secret drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The Bureau set up a tracking system that became key for scholars studying security and international relations.

In the US, ProPublica showed how investigative journalism can use data analysis. It built its own databases, decoded unclear government reports, and created independent models to examine racial bias in judicial systems.

The Economist created the Big Mac Index in 1986. What began as a light-hearted idea turned into a well-known tool in modern economics. Foreign Policy magazine partnered with the Fund for Peace to develop the Fragile States Index, which is now widely used to discuss state vulnerability. The Atlantic Council and Chatham House also produced influential frameworks, but they have the backing of big policy think tanks, not regular newsrooms.

These examples are helpful, but they only partially compare to what we achieved. None of them created more than one framework, even with their advantages. Most had large budgets, dedicated research teams, and access to many experts. Their projects often took years to develop and refine.

In contrast, what came out of the Sundiata Post’s 91-day Sprint was not just one tool but a connected trilogy: a conflict model in The Triad, a macro-theory in TSD, and a measurement system in DSI. Each framework supports the others, creating an integrated whole rather than just separate ideas.

What’s even more surprising is that this work did not come from a university, a funded policy institute, or a research center. It came from an independent scholar in a newsroom in the Global South, without outside support. This matters because it challenges the belief that only certain places can create original knowledge and who can make it.

I faced a new question. What does it mean when an independent scholar in an active newsroom, not a university, think tank, or funded research centre, creates a conflict framework, a macro-theory of state decay, and a measurement index in just 91 days?

What does it mean when these frameworks enter global databases, gain scholarly attention, and become visible in new AI systems almost right after they are published?

I think the answer lies in a concept that has driven this Sprint: intellectual sovereignty. For too long, journalism in much of the Global South has just passed on information. We report events, document crises, and quote experts. We often rely on theories made elsewhere that do not always fit our realities.

But journalism does not have to stay in that role forever. Journalism can investigate, theorize, and create frameworks. It can interpret reality and build original analytical tools that join global conversations.

Digital journalism, especially, has changed how knowledge is produced. The line between newsrooms, research labs, universities, and policy institutes is fading. A dedicated newsroom can now gather data, create databases, develop concepts, test ideas, and share knowledge around the world instantly.

The implications are huge.

The main question of this Sprint is not just whether three frameworks were created in 91 days. The bigger question is what this experience says about the future of journalism.

Maybe the time of newsrooms just consuming theories is ending. Perhaps we are moving to a time when newsrooms are also creating theories. Maybe the journalist today is not just a recorder of events but also a builder of systems to explain them.

Maybe intellectual authority is no longer just for universities, think tanks, and big research institutes. It might now belong to those who ask tough questions, seek evidence, think independently, and create concepts that help society understand itself.

If these 91 days show that, then the story is bigger than one columnist, one newspaper, or three frameworks. It could be a new model of knowledge production, one where a Global South newsroom shows that original ideas, local frameworks, and new measurements can come from outside traditional knowledge centers.

It might be necessary to record this experience carefully. For scholars, journalists, and future practitioners, it may help to simply call it the Sundiata Post Model.

Milestones of a 91-Day Sprint

Before 8 March, Sundiata Post was an ordinary online paper known for good journalism and reliable news. But that day, ‘The Sunday Stew’ started as a column and changed everything.

In that first edition, which honored the late economist Dr Chris Asoluka, I wrote:

"This column will examine faith, leadership, culture, personality, and the unseen forces shaping our society’s visible outcomes. It will appear every Sunday, unhurried, unfiltered, and thoughtful.

"Some weeks it will challenge you. Other weeks, it may unsettle you. Occasionally, it may simply provoke a smile.

"But it will always be honest."

The results have far surpassed that initial vision.

It was the third edition on 22 March that introduced The Insecurity Triad. What started as a way to understand Nigeria’s ongoing insecurity turned into a unique analytical framework for classifying conflict in Nigeria and the Sahel. The series ran for five weeks.

On 23 April, the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU) was set up to be the strategic research and geopolitical risk engine of Sundiata Post.

Just three days later, on 26 April, TSD was launched as a theory of state structure and sovereignty for the Global South. It ran for three weeks and aimed to explain how states fail and how authority breaks down.

The SPIU quickly got to work. It registered as an affiliate across major global academic databases, including Harvard Dataverse from Harvard University; Zenodo, created by CERN and the European Commission; the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) from Elsevier; the Open Science Framework (OSF) at the University of Maryland; Mendeley, also owned by Elsevier; Germany’s Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR); Figshare, a UK and US-based platform owned by Digital Science; HAL Science, the French open-science platform; and ScienceOpen based in Germany and the US.

The SPIU also set up profiles on ResearchGate, the largest academic networking site, as well as Academia.edu and Google Scholar.

On 12 May, Harvard Dataverse published and archived The Insecurity Triad as an original framework for Nigerian and Sahel security analysis. Other academic platforms shared the framework, improving its global reach and discoverability.

Adoption in Academic and Policy Circles

On 10 May, Collins Nweke, a policy analyst in Brussels, became the first outside voice to use the Insecurity Triad publicly, urging in a BusinessDay op-ed that Europe should not ignore insecurity in Africa. Two weeks later, on 24 May, Dr Omoniyi Ibietan, a communication scholar, said the Triad influenced his research on crisis communication in the Agatu conflict.

Then came 7 June.

On the 91st day after the start of ‘The Sunday Stew’, DSI was launched. With it, we completed the intellectual trilogy: a conflict model, a macro-theoretical framework, and a quantitative index to measure sovereign decoupling.

Ninety-one days earlier, none of this existed, not the frameworks, not the vocabulary, not the research unit, not the global presence.

What started as a weekly column turned into an experiment in rethinking digital journalism.

What the Algorithms Are Saying

One of the most interesting results of this Sundiata Post 91-day Sprint is what the algorithms are showing. In three months, Google AI and Microsoft’s AI systems, two of the biggest AI platforms, have mapped out the three frameworks, The Insecurity Triad, TSD, and DSI, and some new concepts from the process. Terms like Institutional Mirage and The Sunday Stew, as well as the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), which were not in this context before the Sprint, have gained algorithmic recognition.

This is important because today, knowledge discovery relies heavily on algorithms. Search engines and AI assistants are now the main way students, researchers, journalists, and policymakers find ideas. When concepts become well-known and linked to identifiable work, they gain digital permanence and become easier to find.

The significance goes beyond just being recognized. It means that a student looking for ideas on insecurity in the Sahel, a doctoral student exploring state decline theories, or a policy analyst studying the link between formal authority and real-life situations can now find frameworks that came not from a major Western university or a think tank, but from an independent newsroom in the Global South.

This isn’t just about digital visibility; it shows a new form of intellectual presence. It proves that in the digital age, knowledge spreads faster, and influence is not just based on location or institutional status.

A Note on this Journey

Through this focused 91-day Sprint, we showed that African newsrooms do not have to stay as passive consumers of outside theories and indexes. We can create our own research engines, define our own realities, build our own terms, and establish our own authority on the global stage.

What began on 8 March as a commitment to deep, weekly insight culminated on 7 June in something bigger than we first expected: a repeatable model for media-based knowledge production, intellectual sovereignty, and digital visibility. We call it the Sundiata Post Model.

This is the final part of The Three-Month Sprint series. It wraps up an intellectual trilogy developed in Abuja and shared with Africa and the Global South to aid research, knowledge creation, and a better international understanding of power, social structures, and authority in a fast-changing world.

Three months ago, these frameworks did not exist. Now, they are part of global academic repositories, digital knowledge systems, and an ongoing discussion about understanding conflict, state decay, and sovereignty.

The bigger lesson may be simple: intellectual rigor knows no boundaries, and creating original knowledge is not just for the world’s traditional centers of power. Sometimes, it can start from a newsroom in Abuja and, in 91 days, reach global knowledge networks.