Adedeji Ademigbuji, Senior Correspondent of The Nation Newspapers, Nigeria and Birame Faye, reporter at Le Quotidien newspaper in Senegal have emerged as joint winners of the first edition of the Media Awards on Electrical Counterfeiting in Africa.
Sponsors of the award, Schneider Electric (http://www.schneider-electric.com), the global specialist in energy management, named the winners in a statement on Thursday.
The award recognises African journalists who publish or broadcast outstanding investigative reports on issues relating to electrical counterfeiting in Africa.
Ademigbuji’s winning piece is entitled “Checking the menace of fake electrical products” (http://bit.ly/1s2TO8u), while Faye’s article in French is entitled “Electricité – Usage des produits contrefaits : De l’insécurité dans notre confort domestique” (http://bit.ly/O0qnUE).
“Schneider Electric is extremely proud to award the very first Media Awards on Electrical Counterfeiting in Africa. We were very impressed by both the quantity and quality of entries, judging was an incredibly difficult process but we were unanimous in our decision that Adedeji Ademigbuji and Birame Faye were worthy winners. On behalf of Schneider Electric, and personally, I would like to express my warmest congratulations to these two very talented journalists,” stated Mohammed Saad, President of Schneider Electric in Africa.
Both winners will soon be invited to France where they will receive their prizes during a ceremony to take place in the presence of Mme Tracy Garner – Global Anti-counterfeiting Manager – Schneider Electric.
Ademigbuji started his journalism career in 2001 as an intern after completing a National Diploma Programme from The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Oyo State .
In 2006, Adedeji joined the National Standard news magazine. Later that year, he left the National Standard as a senior correspondent to work as a freelance writer for The Sun newspaper.
In 2011, Adedeji joined the National Mirror as a business correspondent. After winning the 2013 Social Enterprise Reporting Award, SERA, in the CSR Category and the Nigerian Media Merit Awards, NMMA, Coca-Cola Prize for the Brands & Marketing Category, with records in the Newspaper Reporter of the Year and Telecom Reporter of the Year categories, he was invited by The Nation newspaper to handle the paper’s Brands & Marketing pages.
A graduate of the Institute of Science and Information Technology (CESTI) at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar (Senegal), Birame Faye joined Le Quotidien newspaper immediately after completing his studies.
Birame specialised in online journalism at Berlin International Institute, before being assigned to his newspaper’s political section. He then took part in two training courses in economic and financial journalism at the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In 2012, he also attended a training course in investigative journalism provided by the Panos Institute in West Africa (IPAO).
On two occasions, he was awarded the First Prize for Investigative Journalism launched by the IPAO. Birame Faye holds a Masters degree in Media and Communication, as well as a Masters degree in Project Management.