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Sulemana Braimah, the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), has been announced as the recipient of the Eisenhower Fellows’ Impact Award 2023. This prestigious award, presented by Eisenhower Fellowships (EF) based in the United States, recognizes Braimah’s remarkable achievement in establishing and operating Ghana’s first independent, non-profit, public-interest accountability journalism initiative called The Fourth Estate at the MFWA.
Eisenhower Fellowships, established in 1953 to honor the legacy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, acknowledge his significant contributions as a soldier, statesman, and global leader. In a congratulatory letter from EF President George de Lama, Braimah was praised for his unique project, which was selected as the winner among a highly competitive pool of candidates. The Fourth Estate Investigative Journalism Project, directly associated with Braimah’s Fellowship Program, has been profoundly impacted by promoting transparency, good governance, public health, and the prosecution of criminals.
The prestigious award will be presented to Sulemana Braimah by former US Secretary of Defense and Chairman of EF, Robert M. Gates, during EF’s 70th anniversary World Forum in San Francisco. As part of this recognition, Braimah will receive a $10,000 grant to support the ongoing work of the Fourth Estate project.
The EF President’s letter extends the best wishes of the EF Board of Trustees. It emphasizes that Braimah’s project embodies the mission of Eisenhower Fellowships to create a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. The letter also expresses anticipation for celebrating Braimah’s impact within the broader EF community later in the year.
In 2019, Sulemana Braimah was selected as an Eisenhower Global Fellow, joining a group of 21 visionary leaders worldwide. His Fellowship project aimed to establish an independent, non-profit, public-interest journalism initiative at the MFWA. Braimah argued that setting such a newsroom was crucial in addressing the lack of credible, critical, independent public-interest journalism in Ghana and the wider West African region.
During his Eisenhower Global Fellowship, from March 27 to May 9, 2019, Braimah traveled to various cities across nine US states. Notable visits included meetings with editors and journalists from the Philadelphia Inquirer in Philadelphia, the Chicago Tribune in Chicago, the Seattle Times in Seattle, Propublica and Bloomberg News in New York, and the Tampa Bay Times in Tampa, Florida. He engaged with top media experts, media academics, and journalists at renowned US media think tanks, universities, and newsrooms to discuss his project and seek input.
Braimah also interacted with senior officials at prestigious institutions such as the Nieman Center at Harvard University, the Lenfest Institute in Philadelphia, the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Knight Science Journalism Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He met journalism professors at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Stanford University, and Boston University.
To gain insights into the role and impact of big tech on online journalism, Braimah visited the headquarters of Facebook (now Meta) and Google, where he engaged with senior officials, including Richard Gingras, Google’s Vice President of News.
By the end of his Fellowship journey, Braimah solidified his project idea and became convinced of its feasibility and sustainability. Upon returning to Ghana, he started discussions with colleagues and experts, diligently mobilizing resources for the project. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, plans to begin the project in 2020 were delayed.
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Source: Omanghana.com
