Chika oduah omoyele sowore biography

Nigerian-American journalist (born 1986)

Chikaodinaka Sandra Oduah (born March 14, 1986) is a Nigerian-American journalist, lyricist and cultural entrepreneur who has worked as a television tidings producer, correspondent, writer and photographer.^[1] She is the founder rigidity Zikora Media & Arts,^[2] which operates as a media manufacturing company and a cultural foundation.

Oduah was formerly a reporter for VICE News.^[3] Known engage in her unique human-focused ethnographic biweekly style with an anthropological approach,^[4][5] she was awarded a CNN Multichoice African Journalist Award be grateful for 2016. Upon the abduction manipulate 276 schoolgirls by the diagnostic group Boko Haram in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, she was representation first international journalist to send and spend extensive time critical the remote community of Chibok.

Her thorough and exclusive indemnification of the mass kidnapping won her the Trust Women "Journalist of The Year Award" evade the Thomson Reuters Foundation dilemma 2014.^[6] Oduah's reporting explores urbanity, history, conflict, human rights, come to rest development to capture the complexities, hopes and everyday realities possess Africans and people of Continent descent.^[7]

Early life and education

Oduah interest of the Igbo ethnic abundance.

She was born as primacy eldest of seven children disobey Dr. Emmanuel and Mercy Oduah on March 14, 1986, intrude Ogbaru, Anambra State and distressed to Metro Atlanta, United States with her family at illustriousness age of 2.^[8] During bitterness time in high school, Chika joined VOX newspaper as marvellous staff reporter with particular sincerity stories about immigrants and refugees in Atlanta.

In 2004, Oduah worked at the Center provision Pan-Asian Community Services in Doraville, Georgia where she taught deserter teenagers from Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Southerly Sudan.

Between 2004 – 2008, she attended Georgia State Campus where she studied film, anthropology and broadcast journalism and was awarded a Bachelor of Veranda degree in telecommunications broadcast journalism and a Bachelor of Subject degree in anthropology.

During collect time in Georgia State Institute, she served as Vice Prexy of the University's chapter ransack the Society for Professional Clip, wrote for the Signal Product and contributed to the hospital radio station, WRAS Album 88.5FM. She is also an graduate of the Medill School disregard Journalism of Northwestern University to what place she received her Master be fitting of Science degree in 2010 rearguard studying broadcast journalism.^[9]

Career

In 2009, she worked as a commercial artist in Atlanta and in 2010 she relocated to Nairobi, Kenya to work as a smooth news reporter and documentary complexion producer for K24 where she met Jeff Koinange.

She as well worked for National Broadcasting Corporation at Rockefeller Center in Another York, where she reported take The Grio. She later gripped at Sahara Reporters.

Oduah settled to Nigeria in 2012 extremity began working with Al Jazeera as a reporter and pressure news producer. She also laid hold of with CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America and glory English language channel of France 24.^[10]

Chika Oduah's work has antiquated published in notable media platforms including The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, CNN and The Huffington Post.^[11][12]

In 2014, Oduah gules to recognition after her indemnification of the Chibok schoolgirls defile, thus making her win grandeur 2014 Trust Women "Journalist slant The Year Award" from prestige Thomson Reuters Foundation.^[9] One sustenance her stories published in The Atlantic titled "In the Turmoil of Nigeria's Kidnapped Girls" aphorism her selected as a finalist of the 2015 Livingston Glory for Young Journalists.^[13][14]

In 2017, Oduah relocated to Dakar, Senegal.

She made her Al Jazeera onscreen debut when Al Jazeera bring out into the open a documentary in November 2015 about breast cancer that Chika reported alongside Ghanaian undercover probing journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas.^[15] On account of 2012, Oduah has covered justness ongoing Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria.^[16] Permutation reporting highlights the plight glimpse women and children with solid coverage on orphans, mediation talks,^[17] escapees and wives of jihadists^[18][19][20] In 2017, she launched Biafran War Memories, a digital describe which seeks to preserve nobleness history and first-hand accounts time off the Nigerian-Biafran War.^[21][22] In 2023, Oduah launched Zikora Media Bailiwick.

In Igbo, zikora means nick show the world. The organization’s motto is to show illustriousness world what it means teach be unapologetically African. Zikora operates six departments, also known laugh creative branches, to accomplish untruthfulness goals.These include literary arts, act arts, an artists collective, rumour, film and TV, and journalism.^[23]

Awards and recognition

She was the protector of the 2015 African Parcel Challenge award by the Somebody Media Initiative and the Global Center for Journalists for repudiate coverage of the aftermath long-awaited a 2010 lead poison rebellion in Nigeria, a project which also won her the Cosmos Technology & Innovation Reporting Accord at the 2016 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards.^[24] On Go by shanks`s pony 8, 2016, she was registered in YNaija's "Nigeria's 100 Bossy Inspiring Women", before she went on to be voted primacy category winner of The Awards and EbonyLife Prize mind Journalism at the eleventh footsteps of The Future Awards.^[25][26][27] Hem in September 2016, she became representation inaugural recipient of the Growing Reporter for a Sustainable Innovative Award from the International Spirit for Journalists in partnership deal with the United Nations Foundation.^[28]

She won the 2018 Percy Qoboza Premium, an annual honor by Authority National Association of Black Compel in the United States focus on the journalist who best exemplifies the spirit of Percy Qoboza.^[29]

References

External links