7th edition of IFEJ Flamingo Awards officially launched

The Institute of Financial and Economic journalists (IFEJ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 launched the 7^th edition of the IFEJ Flamingo Awards.

The annual awards event is meant to recognize hard working financial journalists who go the extra mile in promoting financial journalism in the country.

The award ceremony to be held under the theme “Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on business resilience and recovery in the Ghanaian economy” is slated for January 2022.

The overall winner will be given opportunity to attend a fully sponsored World Bank Spring Meeting in Washington and receive a plague, citation and packages from sponsors.

Other categories are Best Finance news story/feature, best Business or Manufacturing story, best Development feature, best Tourism, best Business of Heath, best Natural Resources, best ICT, and best Local Economy feature/ news story.

The president of IFEJ, Rayborn Bulley in his welcome address stressed that the focus of this year’s award is on the impact of Covid-19 on businesses.

He mentioned that IFEJ will continue to engage in and support capacity building of journalists in various areas. He urged journalists to continue to undertake rigorous cross checking of facts before publishing their works.

Rev. Dr. Felix Klutse, a member of the jury, bemoaning the lack of analytical stories in today’s reportage, said the IFEJ flamingo awards was instituted to encourage journalists to employ analysis in their reportage.

The level of business and financial journalism has still not been the best. Most business and financial pages are filled with public relations material and promotional events of companies. Very little analytical articles or features on critical issues are dealt with in the media,” he lamented.

He explained that journalists are entitled to submit a maximum of three entries; one per category, stressing that failure to do so could lead to disqualification.

Submitted pieces are expected to be a feature/news story not more than 1,300 words or 20 minutes of airtime deliver on any media platform (print, broadcast, online). Journalist are encouraged to start making entries from August 26 to September 30^th, 2021.

Prof. Samuel Ato Duncan, the CEO of COA FS, in a speech read on his behalf as the guest of honour by Dr. Richard Nsia Agyeman, he said business resilience is the ability of organizations to quickly adapt to disruptions while maintaining ongoing business operations and protecting people, assets, and overall brand assets. These disruptions can be internal or external, as well as anticipated or unanticipated.

He added that business resilience offers post disruption strategies to avoid costly downtime and also to maintain business operations in the face of unexpected breaks.

He noted that the onset of corona virus disease has brought to bare the importance of business resilience planning especially in recent times.

Companies that made provisions for unexpected events have to a high extent been able to survive in the pandemic era,” he observed.

Most companies had to re-strategize the entire processes of the operations of work in other to survive or ensure continuity of their firms. Other organizations had to lay down workers, cut down on salaries and work from home to contain the economic down turn associated with the pandemic.

However, some organizations had also taken advantage of the pandemic to promote their business online and this has caused tremendous growth for the company”.

He encouraged that people continue to adhere to the safety protocols to reduce its infection in order to protect the economy

COA FS and Ghana stock Exchange presented a Cheque of GHc5000 and Ghc20,000 towards the awards ceremony

The chairperson for the occasion, Adjoba Kyiamah, the Executive Director of the Ghana-UK Chamber of Commerce commended IFEJ for enriching the media landscape in the country. She promised to rally support from members of the Chamber towards the awards.

Over the past years the Institute have been supported by the  World Bank and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the Ghana Stock Exchange, Bank of Ghana and the  GCB Bank. Others are Central Securities Depository, Accra Brewery Ltd, Voltic Mineral Water, Stanbic Bank, Penplusbytes, and Melcom Group of Companies.

IFEJ since its inception has helped build the capacity of journalists to specialise in Business, Financial, Economic and Extractive industry reporting.

These capacity building efforts have paid off to a large extent and this is evident in the high standard, analytical and well researched stories on business and financial reports being churned out on relevant issues for public consumption.

IFEJ instituted the Flamingo Awards to recognise first the writers as well as raise awareness on the need for reliable, objective, analytical and comprehensive reporting on Ghanaian businesses.

Source: Kofi Ahovi || Businessweekghana.com