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Issue 00555 |
February 21 - 27, 2009 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
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Local News |
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Female EA scribes dominate Astor awards By Arusha Times Reporter Female journalists of East Africa have debuted with a bang in the second round of David Astor Journalism Award, whose winners were announced early this week. Out of the three winners from Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, two are female unlike last year when male scribes dominated the award. The Arusha Times produced the country’s first winner in 2008. Speaking in Dar-es-Salaam, Jim Meyer the director of DAJAT named the two ladies scribes who won the 2009 David Astor Award. They include Jillo Kadida, 27, of The Daily Nation in Kenya and Barbara Among also aged 27, writing for The New Vision in Uganda. This year’s Tanzanian winner, Erick Kabendera, 29, working with The Guardian happens to be the only male journalist topping the bill in the prestigious journalism award. They were selected from a field of 30 locally nominated candidates through a rigorous Assessment process spanning nine months. Three independent judges from the United States, South Africa and the UK chose the winners after interviewing three finalists each in Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam last week. The purpose of the awards is to develop the capacity of outstanding early-career African print journalists through a programme of long-term support that will help them to assume future leading roles in the profession. “These are three very different winners: all are talented, all have a track record of perseverance, and all, we are confident, will rise to the top of their profession,” the judges said in a joint statement. “But more than this, they share commitment to and support the principles of the profession.” “We believe they will play leading roles in a regional community of like-minded colleagues united by the pursuit of independent and objective journalism,” the judges said. The judging panel consisted of William Carmichael, former head of the Africa Program at the Ford Foundation in New York and long-time adviser to Human Rights Watch; Paula Fray, Africa Regional Director of the global development news agency Inter Press Service and former Editor of The Saturday Star in Johannesburg; and Michael Holman, Africa Editor at The Financial Times in London from 1984 to 2002, now a novelist and contributor to various publications on African affairs. Each award winner will initially take part in a three-month professional development programme tailored to their particular needs and interests, working with experienced outside journalists, and then become career-long members of the David Astor Journalism Awards peer-support network. In addition, they each received a nominal cash award of US$500. Appropriate programmes will be designed with the award winners and their employers in the coming months, involving attachments to newspapers in the UK or South Africa, or intensive professional mentoring by veteran outside journalists in the award winners’ own newsrooms. The two runners up in Kenya were Elizabeth Mwai and Alex Ndegwa, both at The Standard; in Tanzania, Samuel Kamndaya of The Citizen and Alvar Mwakyusa of ThisDay; and in Uganda, Shifa Mwesigye of The Weekly Observer and Lydia Namubiru of The New Vision. They each received a nominal cash award of $250. The David Astor Journalism Awards Trust (DAJAT), a London-based human rights charity sponsors the awards annually. The aim is to build effective journalistic capacity in Africa to defend human rights, promote good governance and further socio-political development. The first award winners, selected last year, were: Murithi Mutiga of the Daily Metro in Kenya; Valentine Marc Nkwame at The Arusha Times in Tanzania; and Tabu Butagira at The Daily Monitor in Uganda.
They will join this year’s winners for a weekend meeting
in Kampala, which DAJAT will convene in early April as part of its
efforts to build a regional peer-support network of future leading
journalists. |
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