West Africa correspondent for the Indian-based, Indo Asian News Service (IANS), Francis Kokutse, has decided to join the race for the Vice President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) in the election to be held in March this year.
With over 34 years of experience in journalism and communications, Mr. Kokutse is a member of the Ghana News Agency Board of Directors.
In addition, he writes for Bloomberg/BNA, as the West Africa correspondent covering tax, transfer pricing and data protection.
Over the past ten years, he has been working as the Ghana Writer for the Associated Press (AP). Mr. Kokutse has also served as the Ghana correspondent for the Nation Group of Kenya as well as a Special Correspondent for the American daily, USA Today and covered stories in Nigeria and Ghana.
As an Investigative reporter, Mr. Kokutse has been involved with cross-border work with the London-based, International Centre for Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and has been credited with collaborative work exposing illicit financial flows across Africa.
A 1990 Press Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, he used to cover commodities and business for the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires as well as reported on oil and gas for the UK-based journal, Argus.
Kokutse, who cut his teeth as journalist at the Ghanaian Times, served as the paper’s regional correspondent in Takoradi and Koforidua and later became the Castle Correspondent during the days of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).
He used to be a Staff Writer for the defunct Africa Economic Digest (AED) and the Africa Concord, both titles owned by the late Nigerian media tycoon, Mashood Abiola, as well as the Zimbabwe based Southern Africa Economist. He has also been an Assistant Editor of the London, UK based, pan-African magazine, NewsAfrica.
As a columnist, he used to write for South Africa’s Mail and Guardian’s Voices of Africa, The Finder newspaper in Ghana and the Ovation Magazine where he was a founding team member. He currently runs a column in the Today newspaper, a daily newspaper.
In communication, Mr. Kokutse was a part of the team that put together the communication strategy for the Sky Kilometre Array (SKA) project, a pan-African initiative led by South Africa. He is currently employed as the Lead Media Consultant by Siri Communications in Accra.
An active member of the GJA, Kokutse brings on-board his international experience to help move the Association forward. “I have international contacts that l have used to assist the GJA in the past and hope to use this in the development of professional training for journalists in the country,” he added.
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