About me
Ruona Meyer is Nigeria's first Emmy-nominated investigative journalist, a researcher, trainer with over 20 years of experience across Africa and Europe. She is currently a final-year PhD candidate, researching power dynamics within cross-continental investigative journalism networks. She also designs and partakes in media development research in various capacities: as Visiting Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicines at King's College London, UK, most recently as a Board Member for the New Media Advocacy Programme, New York, USA and on the Advisory Committee of the Nigeria Media Innovation Program, a three-year initiative by US non-profit Media Development Investment Fund.
Up until late 2023, Ruona managed the Africa Initiative at the Solutions Journalism Network, USAm coordinating multilingual training, reporting and advocacy of the solutions approach across 60 newsrooms in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. The programme has reached over 2,000 journalists, student journalists and lecturers in newsrooms and universities across the target countries, as well as bespoke partnerships with media nonprofits across the continent that have delivered solutions journalism training curriculum for climate reporting, marginalized populations, environmental reporting, peace and security reporting, and gender-based violence.
In 2013, Ruona was awarded Investigative Journalist of the Year by the Wole Soyinka Center for investigative Journalism. In 2018, she was commissioned by the BBC to work on investigations into pharmaceutical drug cartels in Nigeria. Her television documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine was nominated for an Emmy in 2019. This was the first time a Nigerian film and the BBC World Service production was nominated for the United States' most prestigious television award. With bylines also in the Financial Times of London, and Deutsche Welle, Ruona has worked since 2020 as a freelance Editor for Netherlands-based ZAM magazine's Africa investigations desk, coordinating investigations in Liberia, Nigeria, Malawi, and Zimbabwe; she recently began reporting on sociopolitical issues for Germany-based RiffReporter.
If you're at the event? Feel free to speak to Ruona about: media research, managing cross.-border investigative teams, collaborating on investigative reports and media training, particularly curriculum development and facilitation for constructive journalism, solutions journalism, investigative journalism, and AI for DEI.