ADWOA ADOBEA-OWUSU
Investigative Reporter
SESSION BY ADWOA
DAY 02.
20th March 2024, 14:05Hrs - 15:15Hrs
Getting the story out of Shut Reporting Doors
The session aims to take participants through constraints to reporting freedom, especially on sensitive issues such as high public debt, corruption or lack of transparency, accountability and good governance by governments. Case studies will be used in this session, as well as proposed solutions to getting the story out despite limited freedom. The session will also have a panel discussion.
Brief Profile
An Investigative Reporter with The Fourth Estate, An accountability journalism project of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).
At The Fourth Estate, she has produced some impactful reports. A 2023 investigation Adwoa carried out with two other reporters revealed how a shady “revenue assurance” company was paid millions of dollars by the government of Ghana based on false claims it made in its execution of a needless contract. The story also exposed obscene details of an expansion of the contract that entitled the company to more than US$100 million annually from the government of Ghana. President Akufo-Addo has directed the immediate suspension of the contract and appointed KMPG to audit and report to him. That investigation is ongoing.
In 2021, she exposed health workers who took bribes and issued fake negative COVID-19 test certificates to people who tested positive. After the story, the office of the president ordered an investigation into the matter and the perpetrators were reassigned while others at the airport testing centre were sacked.
In 2022, she led a team to investigate and expose corruption in the placement of students into top senior high schools in Ghana and blew the cover on a syndicate involved in the process. Currently, eight persons are being prosecuted for their roles in the scandal. Aside from the prosecution, the Ministry of Education has reviewed its placement system to allow students to choose more schools, thereby reducing the incidents of corruption in the placement system.
Before her MFWA engagement, she was a broadcast journalist with the Media General Group, one of Ghana’s leading media conglomerates.
In 2020, Adwoa was named among the 2023 winners of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) media Award for local journalism for a collaborative story on herbal medicine advertising. She was also adjudged a finalist for the 2020 West Africa Media Excellence Awards. In 2018, the Ghana Journalist Association adjudged her the Best Feature Reporter in the Central Region. Her work on eradicating stigma against infertility also won her the first position in the Merck Foundation’s “More than a Mother Awards in 2019.
She holds a Bachelor of Education Arts Degree from the University of Cape Coast.