Ethiopian Journalist Wins UK Award For Tigray Reporting

Posted by: Kyeyune Andrew Jonathan in African News November 17, 2021

Solan Kolli, an Ethiopian journalist on Tuesday won the Rory Peck prize for his coverage of the Tigray region. He won in the news category for a report commissioned by Agence France-Presse on massacres of civilians.

Upon granting the award, the judges noted that the conflict had been underreported. They added that Kolli’s work contextualized and addressed the political realities on the ground.

After the conflict started in November 2020, AFP became one of the first media houses to go to Tigray.

“His work was bold and brave with understated interviews, which put this very hard-to-reach conflict in the spotlight,” said the judges.

Kolli has also been covering Ethiopia with video reports for seven years. He has become the first to bring back images of the mass graves at Mai-Kadra, where the military killed hundreds of civilians a year ago.

The Ethiopian journalist further carried out interviews with the civilians at Humera who were the targets of army artillery fire.

“This award means a lot to me, because it is a testament that my efforts have succeeded in shining a lighting the middle of information blackouts and making the voice of Ethiopia war victims heard across borders, knocking on many doors and touching many hearts,” Kolli said.

He dedicated the prize to war victims around the world especially the brave women and children in Ethiopia.

This is the fifth time a journalist working for AFP has won the Rory Peck prize since 2014. It is in memory of Rory Peck, a video journalist killed in Moscow in 1993.

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