Two fellows of the Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) Next Generation Investigative Journalism (NGIJ) Fellowship have swept the top awards in a national storytelling competition on modern cocoa farming techniques and practices in Ghana. On Thursday, September 18, 2025, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) announced the winners of its Cocoa Sector Reporting workshop and story competition. Juliet Etefe emerged as the Overall Best Young Female Journalist, while Emmanuel Kwadwo Gyan was named the Overall Best Young Male Journalist.
In separate interviews, the two fellows credited their wins to the storytelling and investigative reporting techniques they learned through the NGIJ Fellowship.
“The competition was the climax of a one-week workshop GIZ organized for young journalists,” Juliet, a Fellow of the ongoing sixth edition explained. “It was easy for me because the impactful storytelling methods we were being taught were already part of my NGIJ Fellowship experience.”
Juliet’s winning story, Cocoa in Transition: How Traceability, Climate-Smart Farming and Policy Reforms Are Reshaping Ghana’s Future, highlights how cocoa farmers in Assin Fosu are adopting traceability systems and climate-resilient practices to boost productivity and sustainability.
“I wrote the story from the farmer’s perspective to humanize it, a technique I learned as an NGIJ Fellow,” she said. Juliet expressed deep appreciation for the mentorship and peer learning she received through the Fellowship.
“Being part of the NGIJ Fellowship was truly transformative,” she shared. “It gave me technical depth, mentorship, and peer support that sharpened my investigative reporting. It helped me tackle complex issues with fresh rigor and tell stories that resonate with both policymakers and everyday people.”
She added that her recent recognition is a reflection of MFWA’s impact: “Winning the GIZ competition is not just a personal milestone; it reflects the impact of MFWA’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of journalists.”
For Emmanuel Kwadwo Gyan, a Fellow of the third NGIJ cohort (2023), the Fellowship’s lessons on storytelling and data journalism also proved decisive. “My story was a radio feature titled: From Farm to Future,” he said. “It explored how the cocoa traceability programme, part of a European Union-funded project helps farmers improve yield, ensure accountability, and eliminate child labour and farming in forested zones.”
Like Juliet, Emmanuel used the humanisation technique popularized in Ghanaian journalism by The Fourth Estate. “In addition to humanising the story, I applied data journalism techniques I learned from the NGIJ Fellowship,” he noted.
About the NGIJ Fellowship
Since its inception in 2021, the Next Generation Investigative Journalism (NGIJ) Fellowship has nurtured early-career journalists from across West Africa to produce impactful, fact-based, and accountability-driven stories. The Fellowship equips participants with investigative journalism, data journalism, and multimedia storytelling skills.
Fellows are selected through a competitive process involving aptitude tests and interviews and are hosted in Ghana for a three- to six-month intensive programme. Training includes mentorship with journalists from The Fourth Estate and Fact-Check Ghana, two MFWA public-interest journalism projects that promote transparency and accountability through evidence-based reporting.
