Sulemana Braimah is the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). He has been leading the team at the MFWA since 2014.
He has led and grown the organisation from a small team of seven to over 40 staff and established partnerships with organisations in all 16 countries of West Africa. Under his leadership, the MFWA has: obtained equivalency certification as being an equivalent of a U.S. public charity under section 501(c)(3); attained UN ECOSOC Consultative status; signed MoU to become an official civil society partner of the regional inter-governmental group, ECOWAS; and introduced West Africa’s biggest annual media conference.
His innovation in leadership is reflected in the restructuring of the organisation and the introduction of innovative projects such as: The Fourth Estate, Ghana’s first non-profit, public interest investigative journalism project; Fact-Check Ghana, Ghana’s first fact-checking project; the Next Generation Investigative Journalism Fellowship (NGIJ) to empower young journalists across West Africa; the West Africa Media Excellence Awards, to recognise and promote journalism excellence;
In recognition of his exceptional leadership, Sulemana was named in 2019 as a Global Eisenhower Fellow. In 2023, he was the recipient of the coveted Eisenhower Fellowships Impact Award in recognition of the extraordinary impact of The Fourth Estate non-profit investigative journalism project, which he established in 2021. And under his leadership, the MFWA was named winner of Media and Information category of the World Justice Challenge in 2024.
He is also the current Secretary General of the ECOWAS Civil Society Platform on Transparency and Accountability in Governance (ECSOPTAG); a former member of the Executive Committee of the West Africa Civil Society Forum (WACSOF); member of the Steering Committee of the African Network of Free Expression organisations (AFEX). From 2011 to 2015 he served on the 13-member Governing Council of IFEX, the global network of free expression organisations based in Toronto, Canada.
Sulemana previously worked for five years (2002 – 2007) with The Chronicle newspaper as a reporter and later became the paper’s News Editor. In 2009, while studying at the University of Manitoba, Canada, he was a contributing writer on media and communications issues for suite101.com.
He has been a reviewer of the annual global press freedom ratings (Freedom of the Press Index) by the US-based Freedom House Inc. He has participated in and presented papers on media rights and freedom of expression issues at various national, regional and international conferences.
Sulemana holds MPhil (Communication Studies – best graduating student) and Bachelor of Arts (Sociology with Philosophy – First Class Honours) both from the University of Ghana. In recognition of his academic excellence, we was awarded a Canadian Fellowship programme for studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada, as part of his MPhil studies.