When the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) launched the Next Generation Investigative Journalism (NGIJ) Fellowship in 2021, the vision was clear: equip and empower young, early-career journalists with the capacity and conviction to hold power to account, and inspire renewed interest in investigative journalism as a worthy career option.
The MFWA has since expanded its portfolio of Fellowships to include the fields of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Journalism and Climate Change Journalism.
Just the beginning
Though relatively young, the Fellowships are already delivering impressive impact; and have become incubators for award-winning journalists in West Africa. Fellows sharpen their journalistic instincts and presentation skills even before leaving boot camp; often winning awards with stories produced while still in training.
Among them is Marian Amaria Bangura, who in 2023, made history as the first-ever recipient of the Vickie Remoe Prize for News Writing. Her story ‘What happened to the promises, Mr. President?’ – which she wrote while an NGIJ Fellow in Ghana – was adjudged the best among four shortlisted entries in Sierra Leone.
The next year, 2024, Afia Agyapomaa Ofosu, a Fellow in the fifth NGIJ fellowship cohort, won the Urban Resilience category of the Resilience in Focus Photo Story Contest organised by Global Resilience Partnership (GRP).
In September 2025, Emmanuel Kwadwo Gyan and Juliet Etefe – Ghanaian Fellows of our 2023 and 2025 NGIJ Fellowship respectively – were adjudged Overall Best Young Male Journalist and Overall Best Female Journalist of a Cocoa Sector Reporting competition organised by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
That same year, Faruk Umar Shuaibu of the Daily Trust and Bakare Majeed of the Premium Times, all in Nigeria, won the DPI Reporting and Inclusive Instant Payment Systems (IIPS) Reporting categories respectively at the 2025 edition of the MFWA’s West Africa Media Excellence and Conference Awards (WAMECA), with stories they produced while in the DPI Fellowship.
The 2025 Star Prize for Rural Culture from the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) was won by Emmanuel Bright Quaicoe, a 2022 Climate Change Fellow, in October last year.
Two months later, December 2025, Ibrahim Khalilulahi Usman, a Fellow of the third cohort of the NGIJ Fellowship, won the Best News Story / Feature Category for Africa Science Journalism at the 13th World Conference of Science Journalists for his investigative piece on coastal erosion in Ghana.
Most recently, Usman Aliyu of the News Agency of Nigeria was presented with the award for best feature article of the 2025 Grand Prix of the Federation of African News Agencies (FAAPA) on January 29, 2026; his first ever international award. His winning story, ‘Swipe to survive: How digital payments tackle youth unemployment in Nigeria’, was written while he was still in the first DPI Fellowship in 2023.
A day earlier, on January 28 2026, Beninese journalist Bergedor Hadjihou, a beneficiary of our DPI story production grant, won third place in the 2025 Human Rights Journalistic Production Award organised by Amnesty International Benin, Cotonou. His award-winning story, ‘Digitalisation des inscriptions à l’Université d’Abomey-Calavi : un défi d’inclusion pour les étudiants handicap’ examined digital access barriers for students with disabilities.
Better tidings yet
Rosemond Ebi Adwo-Aryeetey, Senior Programme Manager for the Media for Democracy and Good Governance (MDGG) Programme at the MFWA, described the successes chalked so far as an impressive start towards a much larger vision of the impact the MFWA aims to deliver with the Fellowships.
“These sterling achievements by our Fellows are motivative proofs that MFWA’s vision for journalism – which is for a West Africa where governments are decidedly accountable to the people because there are scrutineer journalists watching their every move – remains firmly on course. This requires that we equip journalists to ask the right questions.”
A typical Fellowship programme is structured to include practical training and mentorship from world class journalists, networking sessions with key state institutions, grants to produce stories, resource hubs to build capacity, and entry into the MFWA’s network of public interest journalists across the sub-region.
Rosemond also expressed gratitude to the partners and funders, US Embassy in Ghana, DW Akademie, Oxfam in Ghana, GIZ Ghana, Co-Develop and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, whose support has sustained the Fellowships.
Highlighting the programme’s impact on emerging journalists, Ama Kodjo, Programme Director of DW Akademie Ghana said, “We are proud to support a programme that equips young reporters with the skills, mentorship and editorial courage needed to hold power to account. The Fellowship is producing not only high-quality journalists, but also the next generation of media professionals who are committed to transparency, public interest reporting, and democratic values.”
Ama’s sentiments were reinforced by Dr. Angela Azumah Alu, Fiscal Policy Advisor at OXFAM Ghana, who said OXFAM is proud of its partnership with the MFWA and the results that its support for the NGIJ Fellowship is producing.
