Meet our Board

Ibrahim Bah

Ibrahim Bah, of Sierra Leone origin, is an international expert who currently serves at Senior Management in the public services of the Republic of Ireland. Bah has previously served at Senior Management in the public services of the Republic of South Africa and Malaysia.

Ibrahim Bah has also provided consultancy advice to a major economy in Asia and to a country in Africa and one in the Caribbean. During his free time and upon request, Ibrahim Bah provides editorial advice to peers in areas of certain economic policies and public interest matters. Ibrahim Bah is very much interested in promoting effective and ethical communication and reporting by African journalists.

Anna Shen

Anna Shen is a journalist, startup advisor and business strategist. She currently writes about tech, venture capital, startups, innovation, as well as sustainability and issues around international economic development.

She has worked at the United Nations, UN FAO and at the World Bank. Anna received an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Dr. Rebecca Esliker

Dr. Esliker is a postgraduate level, multilingual professional with over 25 years in Human Service Agencies and Teaching fields across the globe. Possess solid experience working with various groups, including K1-12 students, children with disabilities, refugees, displaced persons, orphans, challenged young people, and the elderly.

Endowed with proven ability to establish rapport with people of all backgrounds and socio-economic levels. Skilled in motivating and inspiring clients to become self-sufficient. Posses sound leadership qualities in working with staff members and other agencies and families. Presently working in the University of Makeni as head of the Clinical Psychology department and working on projects and research.

Saad Samatar

Samatar is Service Manager with the Minnesota – based Hennepin County Library system. He has worked as a Senior Reference and Business Librarian. He has conducted several workshop training and presentations on library and information, archives, copyright licenses, project management, SharePoint, and related subjects in his area of expertise.

From 1999 to 2001, he served as a Research Assistant for archival Services at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. He
was responsible for evaluating and selecting periodicals and books for the African Diaspora collections. He helped incorporate selected materials into databases of digital images and bibliographic records. Samatar was the Chair of the Horn Development Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a non-governmental organization that offers education, training, and development to countries in the Horn of Africa. He serves as a Media Advisor on the board of The AfricaPaper, a local and continental newspaper covering the African immigrant communities.

Meet our Staff

Issa Mansaray Alieu B. Sheriff Chika Oduah Jason Kamau Carmen Russell-Sluchansky Sarah Kizza NSIGAYE Dr. Saidu Bangura Mohamed Sorie Conteh Evaristus Tunka Kolawole Olufemi King

Issa Mansaray

Executive Director

Mansaray is founder and CEO of The AfricaPaper[cq], a publication of the Africa Institute for International Reporting (AIIR) that defends and supports journalists in underserved U.S. communities and post-conflict countries. Born in Sierra Leone, he has traveled throughout Africa, Europe and the United States reporting on business, health, politics, music, development, human rights, gun violence and press freedom.

His work has appeared on the BBC and in New African magazine, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, IPI World Press Freedom Review and The WorldPaper[cq]. He is a former Kiplinger Fellow in Public Affairs Journalism, Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism Fellow, Dart Center at Columbia University, and Tow-Knight Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellow.

Mansaray researches ideas to support and sustain community news outlets and post-conflict media organizations. He has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Webster University, St. Louis; Advance Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism from City University of New York (CUNY), and a master’s from Columbia Journalism School in New York. Mansaray is an award-winning journalist, educator and has worked as a press freedom researcher at the International Press Institute (IPI).

Alieu B. Sheriff

Director, Media Education & Training

Alieu Sheriff is an international journalist and editor. He is the co-founder, political and business editor for The AfricaPaper. Sheriff is also co-director of the African Institute of International Reporting (AIIR), the publication’s training arm. Sheriff has traveled extensively and reported on human rights, press-freedom, politics and the economy. A Scripps Howard Fellow, Sheriff has contributed to several national and international publications. He is a former political writer for the Syracuse Newspapers and interned at Time Magazine and the New York Times Syndicate.

A graduate of Hunter College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Sheriff is a recipient of several journalism honors including the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and the Hellman/Hammett Award for human rights. Sheriff also holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He is a guest speaker at several international colloquies. Sheriff is a member of the Society for Professional Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists, and Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

Chika Oduah

West Africa Regional Representative

Chika Oduah is an independent journalist and photographer based in Abuja, Nigeria. She works as a television news producer for Al Jazeera English and reporter for the Associated Press and GlobalPost. Oduah has reported from Central America, across the United States and presently covers West Africa. Her multimedia reporting has been published by the New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, The Guardian, and Religion News Service, among others.

Oduah is a frequent commentator on African current affairs with appearances on the UK Channel 4 News, BBC World Service, PBS News Hour, National Public Radio, World Report and other radio and television outlets. Oduah is a 2014 recipient of the African Story Challenge grant, a reporting project of the African Media Initiative in partnership with the International Center for Journalists. An anthropologist at heart, Oduah aims to tell human stories exploring culture, religion, age and gender in Africa and African diaspora. She holds degrees in anthropology and broadcast journalism from the Medill School of Journalism.

Jason Kamau

Business | IT | Human Resources

A respected visionary industry veteran, Jason has over 20 years in executing and driving change in business across various industries. He serves on the TheAfricaPaper Technology governance council as the IT Advisor and Chief Information Officer advising on decisions on technology acquisition on systems that lead to outcomes that are in line with the AfricaPaper strategic business goals.

Jason also oversees the development of customer service platforms for both The AfricaPaper and the Africa Institute of International Reporting. Jason Kamau has been with The AfricaPaper since 2012. He is responsible for critical services around business transformation and implementation of resilient infrastructures aligning with The Africa Paper and Africa Institute of International Reporting vision of pursuing global media business services.

Carmen Russell-Sluchansky

Director, Post-Conflict Media Initiatives & International Editor

Carmen Russell-Sluchansky is The AfricaPaper’s International Editor, multimedia and investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. He is the former host of “Due Diligence,” a daily international radio news covering national politics including the 2012 presidential election and a host of Supreme Court and appellate cases.

Russell-Sluchansky has visited China, Japan, the Middle East, Haiti, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where he reported on development and human rights issues. He has also covered the United Nations General Assembly and the World Trade Organization. His acclaimed documentary work on Haiti has reached millions of viewers internationally having been broadcast on major networks including PBS, ABC News, MSNBC, BBC and Nippon TV. Russell-Sluchansky is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Sarah Kizza NSIGAYE

East Africa Regional Representative

Over twenty years of experience in the Media, Arts and Cultural sector, as a Journalist, Filmmaker and Curator. Currently the Executive Director Native Voices International, Sarah spent the first eight years of her career as a Journalist / Documentary Filmmaker before joining Uganda’s maiden Film Festival - the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival, where she managed the annual East African Film Congress, and all the Outreach programs through the mobile cinema and community dialogues.

In 2012 Sarah founded Native Travel Festival now Native Voices International with a view of amplifying local voices by enabling communities to tell stories from a local perspective through organizing filmmaking training to community based members and thereafter, providing them with tools and platforms to share their stories. Awarded the 2019 Women in Film Diamond Honoree for her work in amplifying Women’s Voices, Sarah is a strong believer in gender equity and pursues this mission through profiling women’s stories, organizing an annual women’s festival, conference and award ceremonies promoting women. A board member in various Arts and Media organizations, Sarah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication from St. Lawrence University, a Diploma in Journalism from the International Institute of Business and Media Studies, and a Master in Democracy and Development from Uganda Martyrs University.

Dr. Saidu Bangura

Dr Saidu Bangura

Dr. Saidu Bangura

Regional & Country Director | Cape Verde

Dr. Saidu Bangura is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cape Verde from 2016 to date. He lectures in the English Studies Course, Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, where he directs the Masters in English Studies: Linguistics and English Language Teaching, a new academic program he helped build at the University of Cape Verde. He also coordinates Languages and Literature in the Scientific Council of the university.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Linguistics from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, and a PhD in Translation, Communication and Culture with a specialty in English Linguistics from the University of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain.

Apart from his academic interests and busy schedule, Dr. Saidu Bangura is the President of the General Assembly of the Platform for African Communities in Cape Verde, an NGO that congregates 16 African Community Associations. The Platform for African Communities fights for and promotes the rights of all African migrants in Cape Verde. He also likes writing poetry.

Mohamed Sorie Conteh

Country Director, Sierra Leone

Mohamed Sorie Conteh holds a Master of Arts Degree in Development Management from Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, Bachelor of Arts Degree in Development Studies and has undergone several training in and outside of Sierra Leone.

He is currently the Director of the NGO MADAM (Mankind’s Activities for Development Accreditation Movement) and the National Coordinator of the land and food rights advocacy network, the Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food. He is the founder of both organizations. Conteh is also the Focal Person of the African Network on the Right to Food in Sierra Leone. He has written several articles on a variety of issues and has made several presentations at international conferences and gatherings. Notable among them is his participation and presentations at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty (2013, 2017).

He co-authored - Determining Minimum Compensation for Lost Farmland: a Theory - Based Impact Evaluation of a Bio-Ethanol Multinational COmpany in Sierra Leone, published In Germany, 2016.

Evaristus Tunka

Director, Community Media /Special Reports

Evaristus graduated from the University of Buea-Cameroon with a degree in Political Science and Journalism. He worked as an investigative journalist with The Post Newspaper-Cameroon covering local and international politics. After moving to the US, he worked as an Editor for the African News Journal and contributing Editor for World Voice News before joining AIIR.

Kolawole Olufemi King

Country Director, Nigeria

Kola King is a Nigerian journalist and novelist. His debut novel A Place in the Sun was published and released in 2016 by Verity Publishers, Pretoria, South Africa. He worked as a reporter, correspondent and editor in national newspapers in Nigeria for over two decades. He earned a degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.

His writings have appeared in many literary journals including Kalahari Review, Litro magazine, The Missing Slate Literary Journal and The New Black magazine. He served as Editor, Nigerian Book of Great People, a Who's Who publication. He is currently Managing Editor, Nigeria Now, a news and public policy magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria. He is a senior writer with The AfricaPaper and The WorldPaper.