Climate Change : Nalova Akua Wins International Award

Nalova Akua, journalist with the national biweekly Cameroon Insider Newspaper, published by the Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation (SOPECAM),  has won the 2022 Michael Elliott Award for a story exposing climate change impacts in Africa. The announcement was made by the International Centre for Journalists on June 9, 2022.  Nalova Akua, won the award alongside a Moroccan journalist, Khalid Bencherif. Akua highlighted the devastating effects of an invasive plant on Cameroon’s Lake Ossa, located in the Littoral Region while the Moroccan recounted how rising temperatures in his hometown have prompted mass migration. Through compelling reporting and writing, both journalists illuminated the toll of climate change on people and their livelihoods. 
In a field report titled “The Invasive Weed that Travelled the World”, carried out at Lake Ossa, located in the town of Dizangué, Sanaga-Maritime Division of the Littoral Region, Nalova Akua  examined how a fishing community in the area is racing  to save the lake, one of the country’s largest, from an invasive plant that thrives in warm freshwater. 
The award, established in 2016 by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ), in partnership with the ONE Campaign and the Elliott family, is in honour of Michael Elliott, an outstanding editor and philanthropist whose life was a testament to the power of storytelling to bear witness to, and improve the human condition.  The prize aims to advance the work of emerging journalists in ...