Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists launches Awards

The Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists, (IFEJ), has launched the Second Edition of the IFEJ Flamingo Awards for Business and Financial Journalism in Accra.

Mrs Philomena Johnson, the Chair of Jury of the 2015 IFEJ-Flamingo Awards for Economic and Financial Journalism, said the Awards would encourage all journalists to bring out quality reports on issues to bring changes into the society.

She asked journalists to see the sky as the limit and work in the best of their ability to skill their feature stories put in public domain.

According to IFEJ, the level of business and financial journalism has not been the best as most newspaper pages are still filled with public relations material instead of analytical articles, hence, well researched information and relevant analysis for public consumption are lacked.

Mr Albert Kan Dapaah, the Guest Speaker said the most potent accountability institution was the media, therefore the need for them to play an extraordinary role to make public resources abuse unworkable.

Mr Lloyd Evans, President of the IFEJ, speaking on the theme, “Protecting the National Purse”, said, IFEJ was supported by World Bank, Enterprise Insurance (EI), Agriculture Development Bank and GIZ, to boost packages for the best in the competition.

The IFEJ said, the prizes for the winner of the competition include trip to travel outside Ghana, an amount of money, and digital devices.

The EI assured IFEJ with a support package of GH? 15,000, and a trip to South Africa, while the Agricultural Development Bank assured the Institute of a GH? 10,000.00 sponsorship.

He said a competitor should submit an entry that qualified the categories, including best finance feature or news story, best business feature or news story, best information and communication technology, feature or news story, best extractive feature or news story and best agribusiness feature or news story.

He stressed that an entry could also be submitted into categories of best tourism feature or news story, best development feature or news story, best rural banking and micro finance or savings and loans, best business of health feature or news story overall business and financial journalist which is the ultimate award.

The overall best award, according to Mr Lloyd, would be given to the applicant who won the development award, and any other category.

He urged all applicants to quickly do their submissions before August 7.