The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah, has been named the 2023 recipient of the Eisenhower Fellows’ Impact Award by US-based Eisenhower Fellowships (EF).
Eisenhower Fellowships was established in 1953, in honour of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, for his contribution to humanity as a soldier, statesman, and world leader.
The award is in recognition of Braimah’s establishment and operationalisation of Ghana’s first independent, non-profit, public-interest accountability journalism project, The Fourth Estate at the MFWA.
A congratulatory letter from EF President, George de Lama, stated “I write to congratulate you on your selection as the recipient of the 2023 Eisenhower Fellowships’ Impact Award,”.
“The Panel noted that The Fourth Estate Investigative Journalism Project is directly tied to your Fellowship Programme and has produced wide-ranging impact that includes promoting transparency and good governance, protecting public health and prosecuting criminals,” the award letter noted.
The award will be presented to Sulemana Braimah by Former US Secretary of Defence and Chairman of EF, Robert M. Gates during EF’s 70th anniversary World Forum in San Francisco.
As part of the award, he will receive US$10,000 to support the work of The Fourth Estate project.
In 2019, Sulemana Braimah was named among 21 other visionary leaders from around the world as an Eisenhower Global Fellow.
As his Fellowship project, he decided to establish an independent, non-profit, public-interest journalism project at the MFWA.
The establishment of such a newsroom, he argued, was one of the critical steps towards countering the dearth of credible, critical, independent public-interest journalism in Ghana and across West Africa.
From March 27 to May 9, 2019, Sulemana travelled to several cities across nine states in the US as an Eisenhower Global Fellow, to meet with top media experts, media academics, and journalists in some of the topmost US media Think Tanks, universities, and newsrooms to discuss the project and to seek inputs.
