Motunrayo Alaka

Motunrayo Alaka has worked in journalism, media solutions design, communications, project management, collaborative designs, investigative reporting, civil society advancement and social entrepreneurship since 2005. She is one of the pioneer advocates for the development of investigative reporting and accountability journalism in Nigeria. Through her work with the team at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, she led the creation of the Nigeria Investigative Journalism Network in 2011. Her leadership has enabled capacity development for over 1050 reporters across 100 media organisations and led the implementation of over 210 reports that have been published across the Nigerian media on issues including health, girls and women, education, the extractives (oil and gas), politics, governance and electricity. She has designed over a dozen journalism programmes, training curricula and media monitoring reports across genres of the media including photojournalism and cartooning. In 2014, she started the Report Women Programme and produced a documentary – “Report Women: Untold Stories of Girls and Women in Nigeria”. Motunrayo Alaka designed the Female Reporters Leadership Programme that is influencing conversations around the leadership status of female persons in newsrooms and other sectors. She is a part of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and its African Investigative Journalism chapter. Motunrayo Alaka is passionate about the intersection of ethical and sustainable journalism, good governance and social justice. She believes ethics, collaboration, engagement, sustainability and inclusivity are important to enabling this mix. Motunrayo was a 2018 Stanford Draper Hills Fellow. She is a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford.