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The Fourth Estate’s groundbreaking report, The GHS 3 Billion Lie and the Billion Dollar Contract, was honoured as the second-best Africa Investigative Journalism report at the prestigious African Investigative Journalist of the Year Awards held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The award ceremony crowned the 2024 African Investigative Journalism Conference (AIJC), hosted by the Wits Centre for Journalism. This year’s event drew 158 entries, celebrating investigative journalism’s vital role in promoting transparency and accountability across Africa.
Investigative reporter, Evans Aziamor-Mensah, who represented The Fourth Estate at the event, expressed gratitude after receiving the award, stating, “We are grateful for the honour done us. This is a testament to the power of quality journalism.”
The panel of judges, led by astute investigative journalist, Gwen Lister, praised the team for their thorough information quality, robust sourcing, and precise editing, qualities that distinguished the report.
“Judges were impressed by the quality of information, the high level of sourcing, and the comprehensive editing of the piece,” she said.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the conference provided a platform for journalists from across the continent to network, share their work, and engage in discussions on climate change, artificial intelligence, and media sustainability.
The award adds to several others such as the World Justice Challenge and the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and the KAS Media Africa Awards The Fourth Estate, and its journalists received this year.
The award-winning investigation, conducted by Evans Aziamor-Mensah, Adwoa Adobea-Owusu, and Manasseh Azure Awuni uncovered troubling details about a sole-sourced revenue assurance contract awarded to Strategic Mobilization Limited (SML) Ghana, despite the company’s lack of experience in the downstream petroleum sector. SML claimed to have saved Ghana GHS 3 billion in potential revenue losses but failed to substantiate these claims with evidence.
The Fourth Estate investigation revealed that SML had been granted an expanded contract worth nearly $100 million annually to oversee revenue in the upstream petroleum and gold mining sectors.
The revelations led President Akufo-Addo to suspend the contract and commission KPMG to conduct an independent audit. KPMG’s findings confirmed The Fourth Estate’s reporting and recommended potential cancellation or renegotiation of the contract. Subsequently, the Ghana Revenue Authority canceled the external price verification and transaction audit component of the contract, valued at $450 million over five years, while the $100 million annual audit contract for the upstream petroleum sector was suspended indefinitely. In the wake of the investigation, five civil society organizations have filed a lawsuit demanding the government recover $141 million already paid to SML.
While The GHS 3 Billion Lie and the Billion Dollar Contract captured the award, another investigation by The Fourth Estate—Dangerous Endorsements: Exposé on Herbal Medicine Advertising in Ghana, widely known as MACOFA—also received high praise.
This investigation uncovered critical lapses within Ghana’s Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC), which certified a fictitious herbal company, Krodwoa Herbal Enterprise, without verification.
The company, producing an unlicensed herbal product called Macofa Herbal Mixture (a concoction of three soft drinks—Malt, Coke, and Fanta), bypassed the regulatory framework. This investigation further demonstrated regulatory gaps, as eight major media platforms accepted advertisements for the product despite its lack of Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) certification. In response, the FDA has since sanctioned 39 radio stations, imposing fines totaling nearly GHS 1 million for unauthorized advertising.
The top honour at this year’s awards went to Ugandan journalist Blanshe Musinguzi for his investigative work on the smuggling of valuable hardwood from the Democratic Republic of the Congo through East Africa, which shed light on the illicit processing and export routes for this precious resource.
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