International Health Journalism Fellowship Project: Africa
About the Project
While the Foundation has worked in Southern Africa for nearly 20 years, the bulk of the International Health Journalism Fellowship Project in Africa’s current focus is on the Kaiser/CNN Award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Reporting in Africa, which was launched in 2006. The award, presented as part of the prestigious CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist Awards, is part of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s global effort to increase and sustain media coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to improve the breadth and quality of HIV/AIDS reporting, and to increase access by journalists worldwide to the most current information on HIV/AIDS. It recognizes reporting by and African journalist on HIV/AIDS in Africa that illuminates the broad impact of the epidemic on individuals, communities and nations, and the resilience of the African response to the epidemic. In advance of the awards ceremony each year, Kaiser organizes an intensive workshop on covering HIV/AIDS for the 15 finalists for its award.
“Pain in my heart” a full length documentary by Mr. Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono of Zimbabwe won the 2008 Kaiser/CNN Award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Reporting in Africa and 2008 CNN African Journalist of the Year.
To learn more about the award and how to apply for it, see the CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist Awards website.
The History of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Work in Africa
The Foundation’s work in South Africa focused in the early 90’s focused mainly on improving the public health system overall. However, the challenges of the HIV/AIDS epidemic have come to dominate the Foundation’s more recent work there. Over the past 15 years the Foundation has worked extensively with the South African media to increase both the quantity and quality of media coverage of health and development issues affecting the poor sectors of the population, and also to increase media attention to HIV/AIDS. Building on the success of our efforts to engage South African editors and reporters in these issues, the Foundation also organized a series of traveling seminars to countries throughout southern Africa for journalists from the U.S. and Europe.
In October 2005, Kaiser, together with the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, co-convened media leaders from over 20 different African countries in an historic summit in Johannesburg, under the auspices of the GMAI. Out of this gathering, the Africa Broadcast Media Partnership Against HIV/AIDS was launched with the main purpose of making HIV/AIDS a central part of broadcast media corporations’ business strategies and programming.