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Biography of Geoffrey Nyarota
 



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Geoffrey Nyarota
2002 UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize Winner

Geoffrey NyarotaGeoffrey Nyarota is an award-winning investigative journalist, newspaper editor, and media entrepreneur, with more than 27 years of experience in Zimbabwe and southern Africa. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor of Political Studies at Bard College in Upstate New York. Previously, he was a Guest Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo in Norway.

Mr. Nyarota was a member of the team of African journalists who drafted the Windhoek Declaration in Namibia, back in 1991.

Mr. Nyarata launched Zimbabwe's leading independent daily newspaper, the Daily News in 1999. The paper's printing press was totally destroyed in a bomb explosion in 2001. Despite that the paper never missed a single issue and won an international award for publishing excellence in 2003.

Mr. Nyarata became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, also at Harvard.

He has received a total of nine international media awards for his work as a journalist and for his contribution to the development of the independent press in Zimbabwe. The awards include the Golden Pen of Freedom of the World Association of Newspapers and UNESCO's own Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award, both of which were presented to him in 2002.