Winners with their awards – Jeff is in the middle and Paul on the left
By Roger Jeal
Two Ugandan business journalists who attended Reuters Foundation workshops in London 10 years apart took first and second places in the Ugandan Capital Markets Authority’s first Financial Journalism Awards.
Jeff Mbanga, a business reporter with The Weekly Observer, won the first best financial journalist prize to be included in the annual Kikonyogo Capital Markets Award, named after a former governor of the Ugandan central bank. He attended a Reuters Foundation business news workshop in 2007.
The award seeks to recognize “journalists who have consistently and effectively communicated capital markets issues to the public through the media”.
Second was Paul Busharizi, business editor of The New Vision daily, who attended a Reuters Foundation workshop in 1997. Third place was taken by Godwin Muhwezi Bonge, a sub editor from the Daily Monitor. The photo shows the three journalists with their awards.
“My winning could not have happened if, among other things, I didn’t get that Reuters training course in London. It gave me insights in how to tackle a story. I guess I am beginning to reap the benefits of the London course,” Jeff commented afterwards.
Jeff bravely included a quote by George Orwell on the difficulty of telling whether a writer is good or bad in his submission. He wrote about the major listing of shares in Stanbic Bank on Uganda’s stock market last year and the impact of the planned listing of neighbouring Kenya’s biggest telecommunications company, Safaricom, in Nairobi. His sources reported that the latter would attract funds away from the Ugandan exchange. Jeff will shortly be going to study the Kenyan financial market.
The Authority said that for reporting on capital markets issues in a clear, consistent and educational manner, Jeff won an all expenses paid study tour of the more established capital markets industry in Kenya and the equivalent of about US$917, which he has invested in shares of rival publisher New Vision. During his tour in Kenya, he will visit the Nairobi Stock Exchange, the Central Depository and Settlement Corporation, the Retirement Benefits Authority and the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority.
Paul also reported on the listing of Stanbic Bank Uganda last year, the biggest in the local market so far. He wrote that shares allow more people to be involved in the growth of the economy and the more asset owners there are in society, the more stable that society will be.
Guest speaker Patterson Timba, Group Chief Executive Officer of ReNaissance Financial Holdings Ltd Zimbabwe, made a call at the awards ceremony for “capitalism with a heart” and for greater financial literacy in Africa.
"The issue of lack of financial literacy has to be addressed. We are totally ignorant when it comes to financial matters. Africa is one of the few continents where you come across an MBA graduate who cannot describe what bonds are or what the capital market is," he said.
Click here for the official news on the awards and here for a story from New Vision on the awards.
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