After receiving a record number of entries in 2025, with some fierce competition among them, the judging panel of the African Investigative Journalist of the Year (AIJY) Award has settled on its top five entries.
The two runners-up and winner, yet to be determined, will be invited to the AIJY gala awards evening on 6 November in Johannesburg.
The 2025 judging panel features a distinguished lineup of seasoned African investigative journalists, including AIJC convenor Beauregard Tromp, press freedom advocate Gwen Lister (Namibia), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Michael (Egypt), media pioneer and editor-at-large of Zitamar News Fernando Lima (Mozambique), and veteran investigative journalist and trainer Hamadou Tidiane Sy (Senegal).
Lister said the judges were impressed with the high quality of the entries this year, and noted their difficulties in selecting the top five entries.
Run by the Wits Centre for Journalism and supported by Absa Africa, the award, now in its third year, recognises outstanding investigative reporting from across Africa that reveal untold stories, hold the powerful to account, question those in public life and serve the public interest.
Here are AIJY award’s top five entries for 2024/25:
The assets of former Gambia dictator go for a song
Mustapha K Darboe, The Republic
In December 2016, Gambia removed the dictator Yahya Jammeh. After 22 years in power his wealth was estimated at more than a billion dollars, the total public debt of the Gambia as well as its total GDP that year.
After his fall from power, all his assets were forfeited to the state. This story exposed how the process of recovering the loot was marred with alleged corruption, with officials of the current administration selling assets to friends, family and themselves at prices which were only a fraction of their worth.
Scam Empire
Dewald van Rensburg, amaBhungane
This entry consists of three articles laying bear a massive Israel-based syndicate operating fraudulent “online trading” platforms around the world including a number that specifically targeted South Africans.
Fake online scams have become an enormous global business causing real-world harm to countless people and this series shows how organised and often centralised these seemingly disparate and unrelated scams are.
From under fire to under the guillotine
Salma Abdelaziz Bashir, www.womenwhowonthewar.net
Fifteen Sudanese women — some as young as 18, others in their seventies — are facing execution by military courts operating in areas controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces. The women were arrested while fleeing areas under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). They were later charged with espionage and collaboration — often without credible evidence and sometimes based only on a phone contact or a social media post.
They were tried in makeshift courts inside military compounds in cities such as Atbara, Port Sudan, and Kassala. They were denied legal representation, transparency, and the right to appeal. Testimonies indicate that these proceedings function less as legal trials and more as instruments of intimidation — in a war where civilian women have become the invisible frontline.
Forest Invasion: The scramble by PEPs to acquire mining licences in Ghana’s forest reserve
Seth Bokpe, The Fourth Estate
In 2016, Ghana developed a forestry development master plan aimed at eliminating mining in the country’s forest reserves by 2035. It also adopted ECOWAS’ Environmental Action Plan spanning 2020-2026, which stresses environmental and biodiversity protection.
President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government claimed it was fighting illegal mining but then enacted a law that motivated politicians to apply and get mining leases in some of Ghana’s prized forests, including globally significant biodiversity areas.
City of Gold
Dewald van Rensburg, amaBhungane
This series lays bare, in meticulous detail, how the underground financial sector and illicit gold trade tick. What has been revealed is the staggering failure of regulators to police the financial system as well as corruption at financial institutions that facilitated the operation of a vast illegal gold industry that essentially runs on tax fraud.
It was shown how this dark corner of the gold “industry” grew into a multi-billion rand drain on the fiscus – and how the key role-players engaged in financial manoeuvring to launder their funds offshore.
The 2025 African Investigative Journalism Conference takes place from 5-7 November at Wits University in Johannesburg. Tickets are available via Quicket here.