In honour of Africa Month, we have compiled a list of African journalists to follow. These journalists have produced for international publications and have a strong interest in platforming stories about Africa on the global stage.
1.) Aisha Salaudeen is an award-winning multimedia journalist, feminist, producer and writer who has worked in full-time and freelance journalism for four years. Salaudeen tells stories through podcasts, images, videos and words.
She is currently a producer for CNN, where she produces shows such as Inside Africa, African Voices Changemakers, and Marketplace Africa out of Africa. Salaudeen is the co-founder of Visual Audio Times, a podcast network that provides localised content for Africans in Africa and the diaspora. She also hosts and produces ‘I Like Girls’ — a narrative storytelling podcast about African women and the unanticipated ways life impacts them for being women.
Salaudeen has covered stories in more than 30 African countries including Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia.
2.) Vickie Remoe is a writer, producer, digital entrepreneur and TV host of The Vickie Remoe Show which she describes as a cross between The Oprah Show and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown with a clear and direct focus on African business and travel.
Remoe is a multidisciplinary creative using modern and traditional media to share the wonders of Sierra Leone with the world. Her aim is to expand Sierra Leone’s presence online—one tweet, video, photo, and story at a time.
3.) Hana Gebresilassie is an Ethiopian sports journalist with 10 years of experience and is an athletics commentator at SuperSport. She is the managing director and media relations adviser at Ahadu Media and Communications Partnership.
Gebresilassie has described her experience as being a woman working in a male-dominated industry as “expected to prove that we are capable of writing and presenting sports stories. I remember those times when I had to work more than my male colleagues to convince my editors as well as the audience”.
4.) Ali Manzu is a Kenyan broadcast journalist at Standard Media. Manzu has an interest in current affairs, sexual reproductive health, and environmental and wildlife conservation stories. She is a graduate of communications and PR from Moi University majoring in broadcast journalism (electronic media).
Manzu says that the Kenyan media landscape has had many changes thanks to digital media. “Before digital media, we used to think it was a slow industry that takes time for things to pan the right way. But this changed immediately after things took a turn due to the digital space”.
“The digital transformation has made a majority of the mainstream media house equip themselves with the necessary tools to drive the agenda of the day at once on several platforms,” says Manzu.
5.) Ope Adetayo is a writer and freelance journalist based in Lagos, Nigeria. He started his journalism career in 2020, and the first major story he worked on was about police brutality in Nigeria, which prompted the #EndsSars protests. The article titled, ‘Anger, trauma over years of tensions with police in Lagos suburb’ was published in Aljazeera and the story focused on police brutality in the Mushin area, an impoverished area in Lagos. Adetayo said that this story was difficult for him to write, as he grew up in Mushin and he himself has faced police brutality.
His work has appeared in Aljazeera, Humangle, Africaisacountry, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and The Guardian NG.
Adetayo advice to journalists is “try and care about the stories you are writing about – these are people’s lives and experiences and to you, it might be a job to you but to them, it is their lives, you need to care about them”.
6.) Patrick Egwu is a Nigerian freelance investigative based in Toronto, Canada where he concluded his fellowship at the Massey College, University of Toronto. Egwu has a strong interest in social injustices and the aim of his stories is to create change and awareness.
He was formerly an Open Society Foundation Fellow on Investigative Reporting at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and later spent six months as an investigative reporter at Daily Maverick, one of South Africa’s leading publications.
Egwu’s investigative piece on the sale of fake Covid-19 certificates in South Africa was recently shortlisted for the 16th annual Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism.
In June, Egwu will be joining The Global and Mail, one of Canada’s most widely read newspapers.
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