The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has officially launched the sixth edition of the Next Generation Investigative Journalism (NGIJ) Fellowship. The fellowship programme will be three months long starting in July and ending in September 2025 in Accra, Ghana.
At the opening ceremony of the fellowship which took place at the MFWA premises on Monday July 7 2025, the funding organisation, Oxfam in Ghana represented by the Media and Public Engagement Manager, Archibald Adams, expressed the organisation’s commitment to support the work of the media in Ghana.
He also expressed his hope in the journalists to report on financial malfeasances that cause stagnation in the country’s development and to continue to be agents of change.
Addressing the fellows, the Executive Director of the MFWA, Sulemana Braimah reiterated the organisation’s goal of empowering journalists through the fellowship and other initiatives and supporting them to make a mark in the field. He urged them to be bold, dedicated to the profession and strive to make a difference in their respective regions and across the country.
Rosemond Ebi Adwo-Aryeetey, Senior Manager of MFWA’s Media for Democracy and Good Governance (MDGG) programme, gave an overview of the Fellowship. She also noted that the fellowship will continue to build investigative journalism skills but the sixth cohort will have a special focus on illicit financial flows, progressive taxation, domestic revenue mobilisation and Ghana’s debt crisis and its impact on development.
The theme for this edition is part of the broader project titled, Strategic Partnership Initiative for Ghana and West Africa which is funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) through Oxfam in Ghana.
Since 2021, the NGIJ Fellowship has trained and mentored West African Journalists from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana. Selected fellows are trained by industry experts, Fact-Check Ghana and The Fourth Estate, both under the Independent Journalism project of the MFWA. The fellows will acquire skills in investigative journalism, fact-checking, reporting on IFFs, data journalism, mobile journalism amongst others.
As part of their training, fellows will also undertake field visits and receive funding to develop and investigate compelling story ideas which will be published on the websites of Fact-Check Ghana and The Fourth Estate.
