Manasseh Azure Awuni

Founding Editor in Chief, The Fourth Estate (Ghana)

Nieman Fellow, Harvard University

Azure is a speaker at the 25th ISOJ, happening from April 12 – 13, 2024, both online and in person at the University of Texas at Austin.

Manasseh Azure Awuni is the founding editor in chief of The Fourth Estate, a nonprofit, public interest and investigative journalism project of the Media Foundation for West Africa in Ghana. He previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist for Ghana’s Multimedia Group, where he founded and led the organization’s investigative journalism desk. Manasseh’s reporting exposed government corruption that led to the jailing of three people, criminal charges against four others, the cancellation of fraudulent contracts worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars and the dismissal of dozens of corrupt officials. His work led to the passage of a law by parliament to regulate the operations of Ghana’s youth employment program after Manasseh uncovered systemic corruption in its implementation. His reporting also resulted in the abolishment of a policy that sent pregnant nursing and midwifery students home until after delivery. His journalism awards include 2012 Ghana Journalist of the Year, 2018 and 2020 West Africa Journalist of the Year, 2021 Integrity Personality of the Year and the 2021 Millennium Excellence Award for Journalism and Media Personality. He is the author of four books, including “Investigative Journalism in Africa: A Practical Manual.”

He is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is researching sustainable funding and managerial models for nonprofit newsrooms in Africa, where press freedom is increasingly threatened.