Stories highlighting the resilience, leadership and lived experiences of African women have earned top honours at the 2026 Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards, with journalists from Nigeria and Kenya recognised for reporting that is helping shape a more complete narrative about the continent.
Organised by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, the awards recognise journalists whose reporting provides reliable, evidence-based information that can help close knowledge gaps about Africa on Wikipedia and other public knowledge platforms.
Leading this year’s winners is Nigerian freelance journalist Rakiya Muhammad, who claimed first place for her feature, West Africa’s Borderless Women: Inside the Yoruba Sisterhood Linking Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, published in RM Times.
The story shines a light on generations of Yoruba women from Ejigbo, Osun State, who migrated to Côte d’Ivoire in search of economic opportunities and have become a driving force in Abidjan’s markets while strengthening cultural and economic ties between the two countries. Muhammad’s reporting also reveals that remittances from the women account for as much as 80 per cent of Ejigbo’s funding.
Speaking on the recognition, Muhammad said the award strengthens her resolve to tell stories that place African women at the centre of development narratives.
“Receiving this honour renews my passion for telling stories that place African women at the heart of the narrative as active agents of development, leadership and social change,” she said. “The recognition rekindles my commitment to documenting positive stories about Africa with authenticity and depth, while shedding light on the gendered dimensions often overlooked in broader discussions.”
Another Nigerian journalist, Abiodun Adewale of The Punch, won second place for his feature on Nigeria’s Under-19 women’s cricket team, Breaking Boundaries: How Nigeria’s U-19 Women Are Rewriting Cricket History. The report chronicled the team’s preparation for the 2025 ICC Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup, drawing attention to the achievements of female athletes in a sport that receives relatively little media coverage in Nigeria.
Kenya’s Angeline Ochieng, a correspondent with Nation Media Group, received a special mention for The Converts: How Reformed Midwives Are Ending Maternal Deaths. Her report documented how former traditional birth attendants in rural Kenya have embraced safer maternal healthcare practices by encouraging women to give birth in hospitals, helping reduce maternal deaths and childbirth complications.
A total of 320 entries from journalists across 40 African countries were submitted for this year’s awards. Participants were invited to nominate stories that expanded public knowledge about Africa, with a focus on women, youth, arts, culture, heritage and sports.
ICFJ President Sharon Moshavi said quality journalism remains essential to building trusted public knowledge.
“Wikipedia’s volunteer editors rely on independent reporting to build a more complete knowledge resource, and journalists benefit from the global and multilingual reach that Wikipedia provides. These awards recognise that relationship and the African journalists who are making our digital information ecosystems stronger,” she said.
Chief Communications Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, Anusha Alikhan, said reporting by African journalists is critical to ensuring that African experiences are accurately represented globally.
“Having stories written by Africans about the issues they care about is vital to ensuring the encyclopedia is representative of many experiences and perspectives,” she said.
The awards come at a time when Africa remains underrepresented on Wikipedia. Although the online encyclopedia hosts more than 65 million articles in over 300 languages, only about 3.7 per cent of articles on the English-language Wikipedia focus on Africa, underscoring the importance of credible journalism in documenting the continent’s stories.
This year’s winning entries demonstrate how reporting on women’s economic empowerment, women’s sports and maternal health can not only inform public discourse but also preserve African experiences for a global audience.
