South African journalist Benjamin Joffe-Walt was awarded the Foreign Press Association’s young journalist of the year award in London earlier this week. On assignment for ThisDay newspaper, Joffe-Walt and photographer Alexia Webster produced stories on the disposal of electronic waste in China, climate change in the Maldives, and genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
Joffe-Walt was awarded the prize for a piece the two did in Ethiopia on government efforts to relocate two million Ethiopians from drought-stricken areas to more fertile land in an attempt to avert mass starvation.
In Darfur the pair uncovered a cross-country abductions scheme by the Sudanese army, the first piece of journalism to expose the direct involvement of the Sudanese government in the Darfur genocide.
There was no category for photography at the FPA awards in London, but Webster was recently awarded one of five spots representing South Africa at the Pan African Photo Encounters conference.
Joffe-Walt and Webster were on assignment for ThisDay covering the United States elections when the paper folded last month. Both are now unemployed.