2018 Judges | African Digital Media Awards 2018
African Digital Media Awards 2018
2018's judges represent experts from within academia and top management across the world, with backgrounds ranging from print to television, to research and pure digital.
Meet the Judges:
Chief strategic officer, Wunderman, South Africa
Astrid Ascar has 29 years’ experience in the media industry. She began her career as a radio and TV journalist and producer, and started working in the digital media and marketing space in 2004. She has worked for media brands including DStv, Carte Blanche, Summit TV (now Business Day TV), The Home Channel, CNBC Africa, SABC TV, SAfm, Highveld and in more recent years co-hosting an online radio business show on Hot919 fm.
Astrid’s consulting work focus for the past 10 years has been digital and integrated marketing and communications strategies, content creation and production, key messaging and copywriting, website audits including UI and UX consulting, helping clients implement plans across owned, earned and paid digital platforms, and using data analytics to generate business insights. She also MCs, gives talks, and facilitates workshops and conferences, and offers training in digital media and marketing, key message crafting, media interview skills, presentation skills, and crisis comms.
Since March this year Astrid has been fulfilling the role of Chief Strategy Officer for the Wunderman South Africa group.
Editor in Chief, Vision Group, Uganda
Barbara joined the New Vision in 1992 as a sub-editor trainee and rose through the ranks to Deputy Features Editor and then Features Editor, a position she held for ten years. In 2006, she was appointed deputy Editor-in-Chief and in April 2010, she was promoted to Editor-in-Chief. Barbara’s current responsibilities include overseeing the editorial strategy and journalistic standards of the Vision media platforms. Vision Group owns nine newspapers, six radio stations, three TV stations, a set of magazines and websites.
She heads the editorial team that provides leadership in all managerial aspects: strategic planning, content generation and editing, product marketing, staff development, audience interaction and external relations.
Barbara holds a Masters Degree in Journalism and Media studies from Rhodes University, South Africa and a post-graduate Diploma in Practical Journalism from the Thompson Foundation, Cardiff, United Kingdom. Before she became a journalist, Barbara was a high school teacher. To this effect, she holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Education from Makerere University and a Masters Degree in Education from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Barbara was an international Journalism Exchange fellow in 2007 with the International Centre for Journalists and American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Her speciality is development journalism and she has coached and groomed many journalists in Uganda towards this. In 2012, Barbara received the National Jubilee Award in recognition of her contribution to the media in Uganda.
Together with the team at Vision they have evolved a unique brand of journalism that has grown from simply telling stories to media products that foster development by offering role model practices in farming, education, health, entrepreneurship, environment etc. These projects started off as newspaper stories but they have since developed into big media projects and events throughout the country.
ICFJ Knight Fellow
Catherine Gicheru is an International Center for Journalists Fellow. Gicheru is a veteran journalist with two of the leading media organizations in the region. She was the first woman bureau chief and the first female news editor of the Nation Media Group in the region. She is also the founding editor of the daily newspaper, the Star.
She co-founded PesaCheck, East Africa’s budget and public finance fact-checking and verification initiative. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Reuters' Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, was a member of the advisory board of the Open Society Foundation’s Fiscal Governance Program which seeks to promote openness, accountability, and equity in fiscal and economic systems around the world. She was an advisory member of the State of Technology in Global Newsrooms survey conducted by the ICFJ which looked at how media professionals are adopting and adapting to digital technologies.
Gicheru is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Reuters Institute Journalism fellow at Oxford University, and a 1992 IWMF Courage in Journalism award winner.
Deputy CEO at Code For Africa, South Africa
Chris Roper is deputy CEO for the continent’s largest federation of civic technology and data journalism labs, Code for Africa (CfA).
Using over two decades of insights from building Africa’s largest online news and content portals, Chris shapes CfA’s civic engagement and scaling strategies. He also serves as director for CfA’s forensic data initiative, the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR). From 2015 - 2019, Chris’ role at CfA was underwritten by a Knight International Fellowship, with the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ)
Prior to joining CfA, Chris was editor-in-chief of Africa’s first newspaper to establish an internet presence, the Mail & Guardian. Before M&G, Chris was editor-in-chief of Africa’s largest online publisher, 24.com, where he managed the merger of MWEB and News24 editorial content into the biggest digital content offering in Africa.
Chris has taught journalism courses at the Universities of Pretoria, and the Polytechnic of Namibia. Chris has served as a judge on, among others, the SA Bookmark Digital Awards, the British Council Future of News competition, the NuMedia Plum Awards, the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards, and the PICA Awards. He frequently consults to publishing houses in his capacity as a Code for Africa strategist.
Independent consultant & New Media lecturer, Media and Communications Department, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
Jude Mathurine has worked extensively in journalism education and media development in South and Southern Africa for over two decades.He led the Journalism programme at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology for over four years where he helped set new standards in curriculum development, programme leadership and teaching and learning. At Rhodes University's School of Journalism and Media Studies (2007), he wore several hats including head of the New Media Lab, digital editor for South Africa’s oldest independent newspaper, Grocott's Mail. Jude has held roles at the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Media programme for sub-Sahara Africa. Jude has consulted widely as a digital journalism trainer and speaker. He has also held academic and leadership roles positions at the Durban University of Technology. Jude is a new media lecturer at Nelson Mandela University where he works to educate the next generation of smart journalism and media creatives for social good. His research focuses on media development and digital media leadership and innovation.
Community organiser, advocacy strategist and writer
Koketso Moeti has a long background in civic activism and has over the years worked at the intersection of governance, communication and citizen action. She currently serves as the founding executive director of amandla.mobi, a community of over 220,000 people working to turn every cellphone into a democracy-building tool to ensure that those most affected by injustice- low income Black women in particular- can take collective action on issues affecting our lives. In 2018 she was announced as an inaugural Obama Foundation fellow and the Waislitz Global Citizen award winner. This comes after being a 2017 Aspen Institute New Voices fellow. She is also the Deputy Chairperson of the SOS Coalition, a coalition of South African organisations committed to and campaigning for public broadcasting in the public interest.
When not working, Moeti can be found writing and has been published by a wide range of local and international media.
Associate Professor at Kristiania University College
Dr. Lene Pettersen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Innovation, marketing and economics at Kristiania University College, in Oslo, Norway. Pettersen researches, publishes and lectures about strategy, digital economy, digitalization, social media, social enterprise media, business models in the new media landscape, privacy, collaboration, the sharing economy, interaction design, artificial intelligence, amongst others.
Head of West Africa, BBC, Nigeria
Toyosi Ogunseye is the Head of West Africa at the British Broadcasting Corporation. She manages the operations and five language services of the BBC in Francophone Africa and Anglophone West Africa. An international presenter, she hosts the BBC World Service’s international debate programme, World Questions.
Ogunseye, who is presently the Vice President of the World Editors Forum and sits on the board of the World Association of News Publishers has over 15 years’ experience as an investigative journalist. She was the first female editor in the 41-year history of Punch Newspaper; Nigeria’s most widely read newspaper and has won over 40 local and international awards.
Founder and editor, MarkLives.com, South Africa
Herman Manson (@marklives) is an established business journalist and media commentator and the founding editor of MarkLives.com.
