2nd ZIMEO Media Excellence Awards contest Launched

The African Media Initiative has announce the launch of its pan-African journalism contest. Called the 2nd Zimeo Awards for Excellence in Media, the contest is open to professional journalists in Africa reporting or writing for print, radio, TV and digital. 

The announcement calls on all interested journalists to reflect on their prospective entries and await details of submission dates and procedures. 

The competition will recognize journalism excellence in the following categories:

      1. Gender/Women's rights
2. The youth agenda
3. Maritime economy
4. Business and finance
5. Technology and digital journalism
6. Agriculture and food security
7. Health
8. Education
9. Peace and security
10. Energy & infrastructure
11. Extractive industries
12. African Union Agenda 2063
13. Conservation and climate change
14. Sustainable Development Goals Reporting
15. Sport/ economics, culture/sports management

The call for entries will be issued in June 2016 and journalists are encouraged to present either single stories/articles or thematic packages in the following languages, English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Kiswahili.

A panel of independent judges will be looking for entries which:

• Demonstrate a high quality of reporting/writing in terms of originality, depth, rigour, research, investigative enterprise, innovativeness, clarity, proper sourcing, fairness, accuracy, exhaustive analysis of the context and background and an above average understanding of the subject matter.
• Are data-driven and use creative digital tools like mapping, crowdsourcing and visualization to help tell the story.
• Communicate the topic in a way that makes the story relevant and engaging to audiences and that contains evidence of its likely social impact or benefit to society.
• Provide, where possible, a pan-African perspective.
• Are multi-sourced.

Launching the contest, AMI CEO Eric Chinje said: “When we launched this contest last year, we were pleasantly surprised by the huge volume of entries and we’re hoping this year won’t be any different. The contest is taking a slightly different characteristic as it is now inviting Kiswahili entries, following strong recommendations by journalists for its inclusion.”

The contest’s judging coordinator, Wangethi Mwangi, said: “As with last year’s, we’ll constitute judging panels to address the different regional and language groups and plan to maintain the highest standards of fairness in the judging process.

Further enquiries should be directed at Justus Machio, Communications and Outreach Assistant at the African Media Initiative via email: jmachio@africanmediainitiative.org.