Dele Olojede was born on 1961 and is a Nigerian journalist and former foreign editor for Newsday.
21 Facts About Dele Olojede
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Dele Olojede is the first African-born winner of the Pulitzer Prize in International Journalism for his work covering the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
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Dele Olojede serves on the board of EARTH University, in Costa Rica, and of The Markup, the New York-based investigative journalism organization focused on the impact of large tech platforms and their potential for human manipulation.
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Dele Olojede is the founder and host of Africa In the World, a hearts and minds festival held annually in Stellenbosch, in the Cape winelands of South Africa.
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Dele Olojede was a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
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Dele Olojede enrolled at the University of Lagos, where he studied journalism, and became a leader of the students' union movement.
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Dele Olojede acted in Shakespeare plays in grade school and dabbled in poetry in Yoruba and English.
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Dele Olojede became one of the founding staff writers of a Nigerian news magazine called Newswatch in 1984.
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Dele Olojede publicly accused Nigeria's military leader Ibrahim Babangida of being responsible for the murder.
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In 1987, Dele Olojede's efforts earned him a US$26,000 Ford Foundation Scholars grant, which Dele Olojede used to get a master's degree at Columbia University.
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On 6 June 1988, Dele Olojede joined Newsday, the Long Island-based newspaper, first as a summer intern and later as a reporter covering local news, including a stint in the Hamptons, on the East End of Long Island.
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Dele Olojede eventually became United Nations Correspondent, a perch from which he began to cover Africa, making several extended trips to the continent.
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Dele Olojede was named Africa Correspondent, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, following the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.
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Dele Olojede later worked as a correspondent in China from 1996 to 1999, after being named Asia Bureau Chief, based in Beijing.
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Dele Olojede's reporting took him to all but a handful of Asia countries.
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In January 2004, Dele Olojede took an opportunity to return to Africa as a correspondent to write about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ten years later.
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Dele Olojede has said that, while the South Africa story was important, he has often wondered whether he could have helped the situation in Rwanda had he gone there instead.
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On 10 December 2004, Dele Olojede took the buyout and moved to Johannesburg, where he was living when he learned he had won the Pulitzer Prize.
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In November 2006, the East African Standard reported that Dele Olojede was hoping to launch a daily newspaper that would be distributed across the entire African continent.
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In 2011, Dele Olojede won the John P McNulty Prize, which was established by Fellows of the Aspen Institute to reward the most innovative projects driving social change.
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Under Dele Olojede, NEXT paid its journalists a living wage, opposing the usual local practice of politicians paying journalists and expecting only favourable coverage in return.