Facilitators
Our trainers include Minority Africa journalists but also media professionals who work/have worked with the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, Reuters, RFI, CNN, The Guardian, Time, and began legacy media companies including one praised by former US President Barack Obama.
Faculty Directory
Deepshikha is an Operations and Fellowship manager at Minority Africa. Based in South Africa, she is a Mauritian Researcher and Entrepreneur who graduated from Bucknell University USA with a BA in International Relations. She is also an alumnus of the African Leadership Academy in South Africa and in 2019, she was appointed as the first-ever female Prime Minister of the Mauritius National Youth Parliament. She is a 2014 Bezos scholar, has been a member of the Commonwealth Youth Parliament in India, and was a delegate to the SADC youth parliament in 2020.
Contacts:
Deepshikha Parmessur
Fellowship Manager
Caleb Okereke is a Nigerian journalist based in Kampala, Uganda. He’s the Managing Editor at Minority Africa and has written for CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, The Guardian UK, VICE News, and AFP. Caleb is also a correspondent with Heidi News. He is involved with designing the experience of the fellowship and working with fellows directly on their reporting assignments.
Contacts:
Caleb Okereke
Managing Editor – Minority Africa.
Patricia Kisesi is a Duty Editor at Minority Africa based in Kampala, Uganda. She’s a journalist who’s reported for Foreign Policy and The Guardian UK and with extensive experience covering the rights of rural women in Uganda and the East African region. She’s also a features editor at Bird, a story agency by Africa No Filter. At Minority Africa, she leads the production of newsletters and will work with fellows to grow their newsletter and overall reporting strategies.
Contacts:
Patricia Kisesi
Duty Editor – Minority Africa
Mpindi Abaas is the CEO and co-founder of the Media Challenge Initiative, a youth-driven non-profit building the next generation of journalists in Uganda. He believes that good journalism can make the world a better place through the stories journalists tell. His story has been published in the Huffington post and CNN African Voices and highlighted by President Barack Obama in his #Mandela 100 lecture in South Africa. Mpindi is a 2018 Obama Leader, a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur and a Young Emerging Leaders Program Fellow. He was also selected by the Government of Uganda to be on the National Taskforce for the adoption of 4th Industrial Revolution.
Abaas Mpindi
Founder – Media Challenge Initiative
Sophie Bouillon is a journalist and reporter born in France in 1984. At the age of 24, she covered the presidential elections in Zimbabwe, and won the Albert Londres Prize, which is considered as the highest French journalism award. After this distinction, she worked as a freelance journalist for about 10 years. First based in Johannesburg then in Paris and Nairobi, she covered many of the main events on the continent between 2008 and 2016 (wars in DRC, revolution in Burkina Faso, economic crisis in Zimbabwe, xenophobic attacks in South Africa..) She then worked as the Deputy Director for the Agence France-Presse (AFP) West African bureau from 2016 to 2021. She is now the head of the Hausa service for Radio France Internationale. Bouillon is a published author, and her third book, Manuwa Street set in Lagos, was published in 2021.
Sophie Bouillon
Journalist – Radio France Internationale
Tulanana Bohela is a Tanzanian entrepreneur, journalist and filmmaker. Her career spans close to 10 years, reporting in Tanzania and the East African region on TV, radio and digital for BBC Africa and BBC Swahili. She became the digital lead in Tanzania for the BBC World Service. Bohela is the co-founder of Ona Stories, a digital and immersive media storytelling platform. In 2017 Bohela’s OnaStories won the #innovateAFRICA 2017. She held the first virtual reality (VR) showcase event during Human Innovation Fund Week and her first 360 piece, ‘What Could You Do”, along with another piece ‘White Melanin’ was showcased at the Sheffield International Documentary festival.
Tulanana Bohela
Co-Founder – Ona Stories
Cassandra Roxburgh is an Associate Editor at Minority Africa. Fae is a South African journalist predominantly covering the environmental, transgender liberation, and the intersection between activism and technology. Fae has written for Yes! Magazine, Mail and Guardian, and News24.
Contacts:
Cassandra Roxburgh
Associate Editor – Minority Africa
Farida Adamu is a writer and data enthusiast, based in Nigeria. She is the founder of Researcher NG; a Social Fact Tank with a vision of correcting misinformation through “Telling Stories with Data.” Adamu’s work intersects research data, and storytelling. She is passionate about human stories because they connect the past, the present and the future. She holds a B.Sc in Statistics from Gombe State University.
Farida Adamu
Founder – Researcher.NG
Annika McGinnis is a multimedia journalist and media development specialist from the United States. With Africa Water Journalists, she is the cofounder of InfoNile.org, a geojournalism platform that visualizes and maps data on water issues in the Nile Basin with journalism stories. She also works as the Director of Programs and Strategy with the Media Challenge Initiative, a media development nonprofit in Kampala. As a journalist, she reported for Reuters in the White House and on Capitol Hill, USA TODAY, and McClatchy Newspapers. She also worked with The Advocacy Project NGO in Washington D.C., Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, Amnesty International, and Soluciones Comunitarias, a Nicaraguan social enterprise.
Annika McGinnis
Co-Founder & Director – InfoNile
Marion is the CEO and Team Lead Debunk Media Initiative, a leading multimedia Fact Checking Organization. She is a Fact Checker and the Host for the Debunk Podcast on MCI Radio who is passionate about demystifying false information. She was one of the Digital Human Rights Innovation Program winners for their innovation the Debunk Bot, a fact checking software that automates the fact checking process. Currently, Marion and her team are one of the Innovators in Residence with Agakhan University under the Media Features Project.
Marion Apio
Team Lead – Debunk Media Initative
Alice McCool is an independent journalist based between the UK and East Africa. She covers issues of social justice – and increasingly online misinformation – for outlets such as The Guardian, CNN, and VICE. In 2021, Alice was a Finalist for an Amnesty Media Award, and has twice been long-listed for a One World Media Award.
Currently, she is a journalist with the Citizens, a media non-profit which uses investigations and campaigns to hold governments and big tech to account. She also works on investigations for Eco-Bot.Net, an art research project exposing climate misinformation and corporate greenwashing online.
Alice McCool
Journalist – the Citizens