The AfricaPaper is a publication of the Africa Institute for International Reporting (AIIR). The AfricaPaper publishes news, exclusive world interviews, feature stories, and special reports from seasoned journalists and correspondents from Africa and around the world.
We are interested in publishing stories from any African country.New writers, journalists and correspondents all over the world are welcome to send well researched stories and investigative reports.
Our Team
Issa A. Mansaray | Minnesota
Executive Editor
Issa A. Mansaray is founder and Executive Editor of The AfricaPaper. Born in Sierra Leone, Mansaray has traveled extensively throughout Africa, Europe, and the U.S., reporting on press freedom, politics, and human rights violations for more than 20 years. Mansaray has also worked as a reporter, correspondent, and contributor to various national and international media outlets, including the BBC’s Network Africa, New African Magazine, and The WorldPaper. He co-founded the Africa Institute for International Reporting (AIIR) to defend press freedom and assist African journalists in distress and in need.
Mansaray researched and wrote the International Press Institute’s (IPI) Africa reports for the World Press Freedom Review for approximately eight years. He is a regular contributor to the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder and the Twin Cities Daily Planet. A graduate of Webster University and The School of Journalism, Columbia University, NY; Mansaray is profoundly involved in human rights and press freedom issues affecting African journalists. He is an award winning journalist, and most recently a 2013 Kiplinger Fellow on Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State University, and 2015 Donald W. Reynolds Business Journalism Fellow at Arizona State University.
Alieu B. Sheriff | Atlanta
Politics and Business Editor
Alieu Sheriff is an international journalist and editor. He is the co-founder, political and business editor for The AfricaPaper. Sheriff is also co-director of the African Institute of International Reporting (AIIR), the publication’s training arm. Sheriff has traveled extensively and reported on human rights, press-freedom, politics and the economy. A Scripps Howard Fellow, Sheriff has contributed to several national and international publications. He is a former political writer for the Syracuse Newspapers and a student intern at Time Magazine and New York Times Syndicate.
A graduate of Hunter College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Sheriff is a recipient of several journalism honors including the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and the Hellman/Hammett Award for human rights. Sheriff also holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He is a guest speaker at several international colloquies. Sheriff is a member of the Society for Professional Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists, and Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals.
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky | Washington, DC
International Editor
Carmen Russell-Sluchansky is The AfricaPaper’s International Editor, multimedia and investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. He is the former host of “Due Diligence,” a daily international radio news covering national politics including the 2012 presidential election and a hosts of Supreme Court and appellate cases. Russell-Sluchansky has visited China, Japan, the Middle East, Haiti, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where he reported on development and human rights issues.
He has also covered the United Nations General Assembly and the World Trade Organization. His acclaimed documentary work on Haiti has reached millions of viewers internationally having been broadcast on major networks including PBS, ABC News, MSNBC, BBC and Nippon TV. Russell-Sluchansky is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Georgetown University Law Center.
Chika Oduah | West Africa
Bureau Chief
Chika Oduah is an independent journalist and photographer based in Abuja, Nigeria. She works as a television news producer for Al Jazeera English and reporter for the Associated Press and GlobalPost. Oduah has reported from Central America, across the United States and presently covers West Africa. Her multimedia reporting has been published by the New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, The Guardian, and Religion News Service, among others.
Oduah is a frequent commentator on African current affairs with appearances on the UK Channel 4 News, BBC World Service, PBS News Hour, National Public Radio, World Report and other radio and television outlets. Oduah is a 2014 recipient of the African Story Challenge grant, a reporting project of the African Media Initiative in partnership with the International Center for Journalists. An anthropologist at heart, Oduah aims to tell human stories exploring culture, religion, age and gender in Africa and African diaspora. She holds degrees in anthropology and broadcast journalism from the Medill School of Journalism.
Godfred K. Ahianyo | Minnesota
Director, Sales & Marketing
Godfred K. Ahianyo is the Marketing and Sales Director with The AfricaPaper and a Board of Director with the Africa Institute of International Reporting. Born in Ghana, Godfred has over 15 years’ experience in education, marketing, management and banking with exhibited levels of independence in exercising professional judgment. Promoted quickly from marketing associate to manager and teacher to administrator due to the ability to communicate and build a rapport with clients.
As a marketing manager for The AfricaPaper, Godfred has always maintained the strategic goal of the company by evaluating the sales statistics to determine the business growth potential. He has also controlled the day-to-day operations of the sales team as to maintain the focus on the company’s strategic goal. He explores partnership opportunities within branding, marketing, revenue, and investment returns by coordinating marketing event and open houses to assure success for The AfricaPaper and its sister publications.
Godfred is also former board member of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital board of Directors, Ghana. The biggest hospital in the country and the second largest in Africa. Mr. Ahianyo holds a BA in Economics from University of Ghana, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Globe University, Minnesota School of Business.
Alhaji Turay | Philadelphia
Legal Advisor
Alhaji Mbaimba Turay is an attorney and counselor at law admitted to the bar in Sierra Leone in 2004 and holds a Master of Law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2010 to date Turay has been working with the Africa Institute for International Reporting (AIIR) and its media project – The AfricaPaper as its Legal Advisor.
He recently worked for Open Society Institute for West Africa (OSIWA) as the Law, Justice and Human Rights Program Officer. Before then, Mr. Turay had worked with the United Nations as a Human Rights Officer and Legal Specialist. He is currently resident in Pennsylvania, USA
James Fasuekoi | Minnesota
Associate Editor
Kokulo Fasuekoi, a native of Liberia, is Associate Editor for The Africa Paper and documentary writer, photographer. An award-winning journalist, Fasuekoi began his career in 1985 working first for the independent Liberian Daily Star Newspaper as Photo-journalist. Thereafter, he worked for most of the country’s leading independent dailies as reporter and photographer till the outbreak of the civil war in December 1989.
He served as Photo Editor for the first post-war independent daily, The Inquirer. In 1993, the Associated Press hired him to work for its West Africa bureau, then in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and for nearly eight years Fasuekoi’s assignments included covering an attempted military coup (in Liberia), wars and political upheavals in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. His works have been widely used in books and also by international news agencies including CNN, AFP, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and the BBC Focus on Africa’s news magazine. He’s author of Rape, Loot & Murder-Liberian Civil War: A Journalist’s Photo Diary, A Peek Inside Kamajors’ Land, and Liberia: Democracy Turns Bloody…Will It Hold? He holds numerous certificates and diplomas in prints and radio broadcast journalism. Fasuekoi is a graduate of the University of Liberia; Phoenix College, Phoenix, AZ; and the Lehigh Carbon Community College, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. He is also a cultural artist.
Deb Taylor | Minnesota
Columnist
Deb Taylor is the first female CEO at Senior Community Services, a leading community voice, showing us ways to Reimagine Aging for older Minnesotans.
Senior Community Services is a nonprofit, founded in 1950, that helps older adults and caregivers navigate aging to maintain independence and quality of life. Taylor is columnist for The AfricaPaper and writes about Aging, Retirement, and articles related to seniors.
Nelima Sitati Munene | Minnesota
Columnist
Nelima Sitati Munene is a freelancer, community activist and activist and editor of a bimonthly local newsletter publication. Her long term professional experience has given her a broad base from which to approach many topics on housing and community development.
Her writing has been published in various local paper and online publications. As an activist, she has shared her talent in various local stages and her poetry has been published in various materials.
Vicki Anderson | Minnesota
Immigration Writer
Vicki Anderson has been working in the field of U.S. immigration and nationality law since 1995. Ms. Anderson has experience with non-immigrant visas, employment and family-based immigrant visas, labor certification applications, consular processing, applications for adjustment of status, applications for waivers of inadmissibility, J-1 hardship waivers, naturalization applications and claims to U.S. citizenship, reentry permit applications, and I-9 compliance. She also lectures at colleges and universities on immigration issues.
Ms. Anderson worked in the London office of Ferman Law from 2004 to 2007. She returned to her native Minnesota and opened the firm’s Minnesota office in January 2008. Prior to joining Ferman Law, she worked at Fredrikson & Byron, P.A., which is in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Ingber & Aronson, P.A., which was formerly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but is no longer in business.
Ms. Anderson is married to a British citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident. She processed her husband’s case through the U.S. Embassy London. They are active in the British expat community in the Twin Cities.
Semantics King, Jr. | Minnesota
Staff Writer
Semantics King Jr. was born and raised in Harbel, Liberia. He began his career in Harbel as a broadcast journalist with a community radio station, Stone FM 106. He fled Liberia and became a refugee in Ghana in 2000. Semantics founded, managed and edited a Human Rights newspaper, The Vision in 2004 in Ghana. He also founded and managed an online news magazine, NewLiberian for the Liberian community in the United States.
As awards-winning journalist, Semantics is a permanent fellow of the World Press Institute (WPI), We Media, and the Third Millennium Foundation. Semantics served as a correspondent in Ghana for the Monrovia-based Liberian Standard Newspaper and has written numerous news articles for several media organizations including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Business & Financial Times (B&FT), FrontPagaeAfrica, and Nordic Africa News, among others. Several media organizations have also interviewed Semantics on the contemporary political atmosphere and press freedom in Liberia and parts of Africa. Semantics holds dual Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees from the University of Minnesota in Political Science and Communication, and he’s currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Affairs at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Regional Correspondents:
Farai R. Diza | Southern Africa
Senior Correspondent
The AfricaPaper’s Farai Diza is a skilled writer, author, web and editorial copy writer, SEO copy writer, occasional ghost-writer, media marketing expert, business and sports news. Diza lives in South Africa where he covers ‘hard’ news, business and finance news, sports, general, community news, and writes area-specific feature articles for The AfricaPaper.
Diza has written for leading news outlets that include Pretoria News, Afropolitan magazine, Simply Green, Africa Herald Express, Times publications (UK), Face to Face (USA). I also have a good knack in writing quality press releases, trade journals, social media snippets, copyright material, promotional and marketing articles to mention a few.
Sarah Nsigaye | East Africa
Columnist
Sarah Kizza Nsigaye is The AfricaPaper’s columnist on traditional medicines, culture, films and entertainment. Nsigaye, the Executive Director, Native Travel Festival has seventeen years of experience in the media and cultural sector. She has contributed articles to the Crusader Newspaper, Daily Monitor, presented programs on Uganda Television, and parliament reporter for Media Plus an independent television.
Nsigaye Co-founded Native TV an independent production house committed to providing local voices and community perspectives on airwaves. In 2005, she joined Amakula Kampala Cultural Foundation as Festival Coordinator, responsible for the East African Film Congress that brought together Film Makers in the region. In 2008 she served as Chairperson of the East African Film Makers Forum, and later elected as country and regional representative for the Arterial Network (an Africa wide network of artists and civil organizations in Arts and Culture in forty African countries from 2009 to 201.
Nsigaye was a 2012 IREX Community Solutions Fellow attached to the Media Literacy Project at Albuquerque, New Mexico. She studied Democracy and Development at Uganda Martyrs University Nkozi, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication from St. Lawrence University, a diploma in Journalism from the International Institute of Business and Media Studies.
Mabvuto Banda | Central Africa
Bureau Chief
Banda is an award-winning investigative journalist from Malawi and a well-respected In Africa and abroad. His writings have been subject of controversy due to a strong stance against corruption and other political exposes. He has been arrested five times due to his work. He has been a correspondent for many news agencies, including Reuters, ABC News, Inter Press Service. He is a regular correspondent for The Nation.
Some of his major stories was an expose’ on a plot by the UDF under President Bakili Muluzi to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term in office. This galvanized civil society to act against this. Banda’s work on anti-corruption also led to the arrest of a petroleum firm’s CEO on charges of corruption involving US$11 million. He was embezzling millions of dollars into his offshore accounts. Banda is the Central Africa Bureau Chief for The AfricaPaper, and manages the paper’s news operation in the region.
Country Reporters:
Harrison Mbungu | Kenya
Reporter
Harrison Mbungu grew up in the Kibwezi region in eastern Kenya. He holds a diploma in Mass communication and journalism from the Mombasa Aviation College. He has a wide range of experience in the media industry – having worked for both print and electronic media in the coastal region of Mombasa.
Harrison is a crime and tourism reporter for The AfricaPaper. He had written for the Star newspaper, Coast This Week, and the People Daily leading newspapers in Kenya. He has also worked for Radio Salaam FM in Mombasa, produced and presented live radio programs.
Abubakarr Kamara | Sierra Leone
Reporter
Abubakarr Kamara holds an Advanced Diplomas in Journalism and Media Studies, Peace and Development Studies. He has been in active journalism since 2005, starting as a cub reporter at The New Tempo Newspaper and rose through the ranks to become Staff Writer, and News Editor. He has served as an editor in three local newspapers– The Pool, The Punch and The Update in Sierra Leone.
He has also served for two years as Station Manager of Eagle Radio and producer of Monologue – one of Sierra Leones most popular radio programs, presented by Dr. David Tam Bayoh on Saturday nights while at the same time was working as General Editor of the Sierra Update Magazine.
He has won eight national awards from the country’s media regulator – Independent Media Commission, for best reports in Sports (4), Creative Writing (1), Political Reporting (1), Gender Based Violence (1) and Crime Reporting (1).
Henry K. Mhango | Malawi
Senior Reporter
Based in Malawi, Henry writes for The AfricaPaper. He has worked for various media organizations including the state Malawi News Agency, the Big Issue Malawi Magazine, Capital Radio Malawi, and International Network of Street News Service (UK).
His work has also been published by The Guardian (UK). He covers politics, economy, human rights, environment and development for The AfricaPaper.
Lewis Mwanangombe | Zambia
Senior Correspondent
The AfricaPaper’s reporter Mwanangombe is a Zambian journalist based in Lusaka writing for both electronic and print media. He represent several organizations that include Inter Press Service, Associated Press, South Africa Broadcasting Corporation, and the Pan-African News Agency (PANAPRESS). He has also written feature stories for the Boston Globe (USA).
Lewis worked for the Government’s Zambia News Agency as Deputy Editor-in-Chief, State House Press Secretary, and at the then Zambia Broadcasting Services (fore-runner of the Zambia National Broadcasting Services) as Sub-Editor. He was the first journalist from his country to work Online (Internet) as a professional Editor and Manager of the Government of Zambia’s tentative publication (Zambia-Today Online News Page). He studied Journalism at Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce in Lusaka, and holds a post-graduate diploma in News Agency Journalism.
Clarence Jackson | Liberia
Reporter
Jackson, is a Liberian journalist, and currently works as Editor-in-Chief of Radio Gbarnga, a community radio station in Bong County, central Liberia. He is also regional coordinator of the Press Union of Liberia. As PUL regional coordinator, he oversees Journalists and Media Institutions in three of the fifteen counties, including Bong, Nimba and Lofa. He has worked as Bong County correspondent for the former Independent Star Radio. He has write for the Dakota based Liberian online newspaper – UAS.
Mondeyesco N. Tulorgbo | Liberia
Reporter
Tulorgbo reports for The AfricaPaper from Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. He is reporter for the University of Liberia’s Radio LUX FM 106.6., and also produces a 30 minute radio program at the same Station. A journalist for 14 years, Tulorgbo, holds BA in Journalism and certificates in Human Rights Reporting. He has reported for various newspapers in West Africa.
Eduardo Namburete | Mozambique
Media Correspondent
Namburete, a journalist and lecturer, is the founding dean at the School of Communication and Arts, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. Apart from lecturer at the university, he owns a media consulting firm where we work in media research, publishing and branding. He publishes a weekly newspaper
Mwape Jacob Mulubwa | Zambia
Reporter
Mulubwa is a seasoned journalist with about 15 years work experience. He corresponds for The AfricaPaper from in Zambia. He covers politics, human rights, and press freedom.
Mark Keith Muhumuza | Uganda
Joseph Kayira | Kenya
Reporter
Joseph Kimani Kabiru | Kenya
Reporter
Mark Keith Muhumuza | Uganda
Reporter
Questions? Comments? Interested in writing for The AfricaPaper?
Phone
Editors: (763) 568-4335, Business: (404) 226-1470, Consultancy: (917) 907-0035
Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Twitter: @theafricapaper Skype: the-africapaper
Facebook: TAP-TheAfricaPaper
