Organized crime and corruption are widespread, deeply rooted, and growing in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region with some of the world’s highest rates of poverty and inequality. Powerful criminal groups operate with the help of politicians, government officials, and a “criminal services industry”, including corrupt banks. They make their money through the illegal narcotics trade, human trafficking, wildlife smuggling, illegal mining, the illicit trade in arms, and more. This has led to huge transfers of wealth, increasing immiseration, the rise of extremist groups, the decline of democratic institutions, and the strengthening of kleptocratic regimes.

In this GIJN webinar, three senior reporters will share tips and resources to investigate financial crime, arms smuggling, and environmental crime.

Madeleine Ngeunga is a Cameroonian data journalist specializing in the environment and human rights. Currently a fellow at the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigation Network and editor of InfoCongo, Madeleine combines fieldwork and satellite data analysis to produce in-depth environmental investigations in the Congo Basin rainforest.

Sandrine Sawadogo is a reporter with L’Economiste du Faso, a leading economic weekly in Burkina Faso. She specializes in economic and financial reporting (including illicit financial flows, corporate fraud, and ill-gotten wealth). Sawadogo is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and has worked on numerous ICIJ investigations including Panama Papers and Fatal Extraction.

Khadija Sharife is an award-winning investigative journalist based in South Africa and a senior investigator at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Khadija has contributed to investigations about illegal logging in Madagascar, corruption in Angola, and commodity traders fueling arms trafficking in Cote d’Ivoire. She is the former director of the Platform for the Protection of Whistleblowers and a 2021 Yale Poynter Fellow in Journalism.

The moderator is Maxime Domegni, GIJN’s Francophone Africa editor.

This webinar is tied to the future publication of a new GIJN Guide, Investigating Organized Crime In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Reporter’s Guide, intended to help investigative journalists and other watchdog groups in and about Africa to effectively shine the spotlight on the various forms of organized crimes that devastate the continent.

The webinar will include French interpretation.

Watch our Twitter feed @gijn and newsletter for details on future events.

Thanks to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime for its support of this project.

Sign up for the webinar here!

Date: Thursday 8 December 2022
Time: 8:00 AM EST/1:00 PM Dakar – What time is it in my city?