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Kenya’s Idris Muktar and Mercy Adhiambo Orengo are among the recipients for the 2021 Foreign Press Correspondents scholarship award.

The Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents aims to honor and recognize outstanding foreign correspondents with the Annual Scholarship and Professional Excellence Awards.

Idris Muktar: is a master’s student at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to graduate school, he worked as a journalist across Africa for DW, CNN, among other national, regional and international news outlets. In 2021, he received an Annual Scholarship Award from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA.

He has reported on prominent issues across the continent including the 2015 President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya, Pope Francis’s maiden visit to Africa, the 2019 South African elections. In 2019, he was the lead producer in Addis Ababa for CNN’s coverage of the crashing of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 that killed 157 people. He is also a MasterCard Foundation Scholar and a 2021 Human Righters Center at Berkeley Fellow.

Mercy Adhiambo Orengo: is a student at the graduate school of Journalism at Columbia University. She is in the MA-Science cohort. In 2021, she received an Annual Scholarship Award from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA. She has a first degree in journalism from the United States International University in Nairobi. She has worked as a reporter for various media houses in Kenya, writing human interest stories and features.

She has reported on different areas and topics including war and conflict, health, children, youth, and development. She was the 2020 Nieman visiting fellow at Harvard University researching how to report on children and vulnerable communities.

Other awardees for the 2021 scholarship include Khushboo Razdan from India, Noran Morsi from Egypt, Isabella Zavarise from Canada, Eleonora Bianchi from Switzerland and Natalia Sánchez Loayza from Peru.

The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) provides annual scholarships to foreign journalists who are completing their Master’s level studies in a U.S.-based academic institution.

Eligibility

  • Professional journalists originated from foreign countries (U.S. citizens are not eligible to apply )
  • They are currently enrolled in any Master’s level program in any US-based academic institution (due to the COVID19 situation, applicants do not need to be physically present in the U.S. at their application time but they must be officially enrolled in a Master’s program of a U.S.-based academic institution),
  • They graduated from any Master’s level program of any US-based academic institution at any time in the year 2021.