Tom Rhodes/CPJ East Africa Consultant

Tom Rhodes is CPJ's East Africa representative, based in Nairobi. Rhodes is a founder of southern Sudan’s first independent newspaper. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ

CPJ launches Somali Security Guide

Last week, two gunmen waited near the home of a young Somali journalist, Rahmo Abdulkadir, who had recently returned to the capital from the Galgadud district in central Somalia where she worked as a reporter for Radio Abudwaq (Worshipper). According to local journalists, 25-year-old Rahmo had just left an Internet café in Mogadishu around 9:30…

Read More ›

This week in Mogadishu, Abdiaziz Abdinuur, left was freed from prison, but Mohamed Ali Nuxurkey was killed in a bombing that injured three other journalists. (AFP, Raxanreeb)

Jubilation, then tragedy, for Mogadishu press this week

“He’s free! He’s free!” a friend of mine from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, shouted down the phone line on Sunday. For a fleeting second I did not know whom he referred to, given the high number of journalists imprisoned in the Horn region of Africa–but then it dawned on me: Abdiaziz Abdinuur had finally found justice.…

Read More ›

Information Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo has criticized the press in the past. (The Nation)

New challenges for local and foreign press in Kenya

Kenya has passed peacefully through its election period, but questions still hang over the legitimacy of presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory–as well as over the future of the country’s media coverage. During polling, challenges arose for both local and international media, and they have not subsided. For the foreign press, it is now unclear how…

Read More ›

Presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta speaks to the press on election day. (AP)

Journalists relieved, wary amid Kenyan elections

Journalists could be seen rushing from polling station to polling station Monday to see long queues of determined Kenyan voters in what was apparently a largely peaceful election, according to the Deputy Director of Kenya’s statutory media council, Victor Bwire. But leading up to the vote, many journalists worked in a climate of fear; and…

Read More ›

Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon met February 16 with the local journalist union. (NUSOJ)

Will talk of stronger Somali justice lead to action?

Spirits of journalists in Somalia, the most dangerous country in Africa to practice the profession, were lifted slightly this week after Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon made several auspicious announcements. The key concern on the minds of journalists in the capital, Mogadishu, is access to justice–both in terms of journalists’ own court appearances and in…

Read More ›

Burundi journalists react to tear gas at Tuesday's protest. (Teddy Mazina)

Burundi police attack journalists marching for Ruvakuki

On Tuesday, Burundi’s press corps did what it has done for the past three weeks: protest the imprisonment of one of its own. Hassan Ruvakuki is a reporter jailed since November 28, 2011 on anti-state charges; for the first time, the journalists wore white t-shirts showing Ruvakuki in his green prison uniform. But this time,…

Read More ›

Hassan Ruvakuki (IWACU)

Burundi journalists march to support Ruvakuki

At 8 o’clock Tuesday morning roughly 50 Burundian journalists silently marched around the courthouses in the capital, Bujumbura, and the offices of the justice minister, protesting the imprisonment of their colleague, Hassan Ruvakuki. “They sentenced him to three years without following the law,” said Patrick Nduwimana, one of the protest organizers and the interim director…

Read More ›

Djibouti President Ismael Omar Guelleh addresses the media after his re-election in April 2011. (AP)

In Djibouti, journalist defiant despite revolving jail door

Online journalist Houssein Ahmed Farah spent more than three months in jail in Djibouti before an appeals court finally released him in November–after his defense requested bail three times, Houssein said. His crime? Officially nothing. “It appears to have been an arbitrary arrest because there is still no evidence on file,” Houssein told me. He…

Read More ›

Somali refugees in Kenya are ordered to report to the Dadaab refugee camp, which already holds more than 450,000 people. (Mohamed Abdi)

Somalis in Kenya hounded by security forces, refugee policy

Exiled Somali journalists living in Nairobi were struck with disbelief this week when daily newspapers published a statement by the Department of Refugee Affairs ordering all Somali refugees to move to refugee camps. “The refugees, particularly those living in urban centers, are contributing to insecurity in the country,” the statement read. The acting commissioner for…

Read More ›

Saidati Mukakibib, left, and Agnes Uwimana Nkusi sit in Rwandan Supreme Court in January 2012. (AFP/Steve Terrill)

Jailed Rwandan editors turn to African Commission

Among the 232 journalists imprisoned around the world are Rwandan editors Agnès Uwimana and Saidati Mukakibibi, who are serving years-long terms on charges they defamed the president, Paul Kagame, and incited violence. Their crime? The women had published a series of stories in 2010 on several sensitive issues the Kagame government doesn’t want scrutinized. The…

Read More ›