4th June, 2010
Three photographs taken at AMREF projects were a centre of attraction at the prestigious CNN Africa Journalist of the Year Awards in Kampala on Saturday, May 29. Boniface Mwangi was declared CNN Photographer of the Year on the strength of images he took in Katine (Uganda), Afar (Ethiopia) and Magadi (Kenya) depicting ‘the Boy Child in sub-Saharan Africa’.
The guest of honour at the glamorous awards ceremony, held at the Kampala Serena Hotel, was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who challenged African journalists to use media freedom responsibly, and particularly to highlight socio-economic development issues. The President also asked media owners to pay journalists well to minimise negative and biased reporting. “An angry journalist is an angry journalist,” he observed.
Boniface, who also won the award in 2008, paid tribute to AMREF for facilitating his visits to various marginalised communities around the continent. In Katine, where he took a picture of a breastfeeding infant, AMREF is partnering with the Guardian and Observer newspapers, Barclays and 25,000 people living in the sub-county to help improve their lives.
The three-year project will increase access to good quality health care, clean water and sanitation, and education. It will also improve people’s ability to earn a decent living and give them a voice in local decision-making.
In Afar, Boniface’s picture was of a young herdsboy carrying a gun. AMREF supports the Government of Ethiopia in the vast and arid Afar region to provide health care for 1.6 million people, with a special focus on reproductive health for pastoralist youth. And in Magadi, where he photographed a Maasai teenager receiving a lesson on safe sex, AMREF is seeking to improve the reproductive health of nomadic communities in order to reduce the deaths of girls and women during pregnancy and childbirth.
The winning pictures:
