ZAM Reporter

African investigative journalism in the spotlight at Hamburg conference

Image © GIJN

African investigative journalists met with international colleagues at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last week.

Joy Kiriga, who contributed to the transnational investigations on Public Disservice – a collaboration between the African Investigative Publishing Collective, ZAM and Africa Uncensored, spoke at the conference. She was warmly introduced on the GIJC website as follows:

“Joy Kirigia is a reporter, currently working with Africa Uncensored, an independent media house based in Nairobi, Kenya. She is part of a 2019 transnational investigation, which revealed how poor African countries waste billions while depriving its citizens, through misuse of state budgets available for crucial services like health, education and infrastructure, in six African countries.”

Check your Twitter direct messages for pictures and a YouTube link to the Kenyan 'The Associates' video.

AIPC presence at GIJC 2019

AIPC exco member Estacio Valoi presented twice: once on plunder in Mozambique generally, ranging from gemstones to water to timber, as part of a natural wealth governance panel, and second on his story about the failure of UN aid to reach Mozambique as part of a panel on disaster reporting. 

A video version of the Kenya chapter of the ZAM-AIPC investigation The Associates, into the use of state moneys in Kenya, where lucrative contracts are distributed over a network of friends of state officials, circulated throughout the conference (and wider) to much acclaim. Africa Uncensored did a great job making this documentary – and a full documentary of the complete The Associates investigation is in the pipeline!

Africa Uncensored and AIPC reporter Purity Mukami also presented on data driven reporting at the conference.

Other AIPC members and partners at the conference were: Africa Uncensored's dynamic boss, John-Allan Namu, whose outfit also won an excellence award for the investigative documentary The Profiteers, about politician's plunder of South Sudan; AIPC founder member and Nigeria's Premium Times founder, Musikilu Mojeed; new GIJN Africa Editor Benon Herbert Oluka, and data advisor for our recent Last Resource project, Crina Boros. ZAM was represented by its Bureau Afrika co-ordinator Laurens Nijzink.