Akwe Amosu

Akwe Amosu is the Africa advocacy director at the Open Society Institute. She seeks to facilitate links between African-based foundations, initiatives and grantees, and the greater Washington, D.C., community, as well as share perspectives on African issues and collaborate with other organizations in areas of common concern.

Amosu has broad experience in African affairs and has written and broadcast extensively on pressing issues affecting the continent. For over 20 years she worked as a journalist and radio producer in leading African and Africa-targeted media. She joined allAfrica.com as its founding executive editor in 2000 and the site was twice nominated (2002 and 2003) in the Webby Awards' Best News Site category. While working at the BBC World Service during the '90s, her team won several medals at the New York festival; Amosu also conceived a landmark radio series on the history of Africa during her leadership of the station's flagship breakfast show "Network Africa" as well as other programs for Africa.

She has also worked at the Financial Times in London and at West Africa magazine. In 2003-2005, she was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as head of communication at the United Nation's Economic Commission for Africa, and part of the strategic and policy-focused team supporting the commission's executive secretary.

Amosu is a board member of the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), Trust Africa, and the AllAfrica Foundation. Through personal advocacy and membership in campaign groups, she has sought to advance civil society leadership on HIV and AIDS and is active in efforts to increase awareness of the disease's long-term impact on African states and governance. She is passionately concerned with strengthening media capacity in Africa and has participated over many years in media development and direct training. Through the IWMF, she participates in an innovative project to strengthen media coverage of HIV and AIDS in Africa and promote women in journalism. With colleagues at Trust Africa, she aims to help consolidate efforts by African institutions to build peace and resolve conflicts. A strong advocate of open source technology for Africa, she is also a member of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa.

Amosu grew up in Nigeria and was educated there and in England. She graduated with honors from the University of Sussex with a BA in social anthropology and African studies. She was the Harry Oppenheimer fellow at the University of Cape Town's Centre for African Studies, where she researched the future of post-apartheid broadcasting in South Africa. The results were published by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa as an occasional paper entitled "New Routes for Radio: Ideas for Better Broadcasting in a Democratic South Africa."