Baraza Sessions Baraza Media Lab

Thomson Foundation together with Baraza Media Lab, recently concluded the inaugural Bettina Fund program, an initiative intended to support twelve women in an effort to find future leaders and entrepreneurs in Kenyan media. The programme, which ran for three months, sought to foster the next generation of women leaders .

Over the course of the programme, the cohort received a number of virtual sessions with exemplary women in media. The aim was to empower them to take on senior roles in media and build a sustainable network of women journalists and media professionals.

For our last webinar, we hosted the award winning Julie Gichuru, a media personality with vast experience in communication, media and entertainment sectors. Julie currently serves as the Chief Public Affairs and Communications Officer at the Mastercard Foundation overseeing corporate, programmatic, policy & thought leadership communications, and a team spanning Africa and Canada. Prior to her role at the Foundation, Julie had a two decade career in the fields of broadcast, print, digital media and development communications at some of the major media houses in Kenya such as worked at the top media companies in Kenya such as Capital FM, Kenya Television Network, NTV (Kenya), & Citizen TV.

Baraza Curator Christine Mungai is in conversation with Wanjiru Koinange, author of the novel The Havoc of Choice, a gripping story of a Kenyan family set during the turmoil of the 2007 general election. This week marks 10 years since the promulgation of a new and progressive constitution, a document that was the product of decades of activism, for which the final push was the fall-out from that 2007 election. In the years since, the constitution has faced a steady and insidious undermining, and for Koinange, it's not just a legal document that has been under assault - it is memory itself. Koinange is also the co-founder of Book Bunk, an initiative to restore public libraries in Nairobi, and reverse the years of neglect that relegate such public spaces to irrelevance in a brutally neoliberal and grasping society.

Listen as Al Kags and Christine Mungai  talk about the rise of podcasts & new media in the Kenyan media landscape, during the launch of SemaBOX - a boutique podcasting studio embedded at Baraza Media Lab.