Daily Express’ senior business
reporter, Fred Yaw Sarpong has won the 2014 Enterprise Life Assurance /
Sanlam Summer School award for Financial Journalists. His selection from
dozens of colleagues came after emerging as one the best business
reporters during the 2013 edition of the Institute of Finance and Economic
Journalists Gold Awards for Financial Journalists.
As part of his package, Mr. Sarpong
will be traveling to Pretoria, South Africa next week to join
other financial journalists from other African countries for a training
programme.
His travel will be
fully sponsored by the Enterprise Life Assurance Company Limited from
Ghana. The package include air tickets, Visa, accommodation, meal,
agreed per diem, as well as an insurance package worth about €30,000.
The Sanlam annual Summer School
for Financial Journalists was initiated in 2003 as a direct result of a
recommendation in the King II report on corporate governance; that the private
sector should become involved in the training of financial journalists to
promote corporate accountability and governance.
At a press briefing in
Accra on
Tuesday to outdoor the winner, the
Executive Director of Enterprise Life, Mr. C.C. Bruse said building the
capacity of journalists is one of his outfit’s corporate social
responsibility (CSR) initiative adding that their CSR initiatives have the
objective of creating positive social development and reinforce their values.
“As a company we hold
professionalism as one of our values and it is our hope that this award
initiative will promote professionalism in financial journalism,” he indicated.
According to him, the objective of
the award scheme is to contribute to the capacity building of journalists
especially in financial and insurance reporting.
“Secondly, we look to deepen the
relationship between our industry and journalists. This will include providing
workshops and other programmes to deepen understanding of insurance among
journalists. The deepened relationship will hopefully expand the scope of reporting
on activities and corporate news on insurance”, he said.
He noted that despite the challenges
in the industry, Enterprise Life has responded well and at half year they have
had almost 30% growth over the same period last year.
On his part, the Executive Director
of Enterprise Group, Mr. Keli Gadzekpo advised media practitioners especially
financial journalists to take keen interest in reporting on insurance.
Mr. Sarpong in his remarks thanked
Enterprise Life and the Institute of Finance and Economic Journalists (IFEJ)
for the opportunity given him.
“I am very grateful to Enterprise
Life for this opportunity. It is a great platform which I think will help me
learn more and improve in my profession” , he added.
He also thanked the IFEJ team for
their support and called on other corporate bodies to emulate what Enterprise
Life has done. He promised to make use of this opportunity so that other
colleague journalists can also benefit from it.
The IFEJ President, Mr. Lloyd Evans
thanked Enterprise Life for the initiative and called for an extension so that
there can be a comprehensive evaluation.
He stated that “financial journalism
is still very young in this country and it will take much effort, time and
resources to bring it to the required standard.
“We therefore need corporate
institutions like Enterprise Life to lend a support to the work of the
Institute to help train and develop interest in this very specialized area. It
is against this back ground that we have had this award to recognize and
appreciate excellence in financial journalism,” said Mr. Evans.
Mr. Evans announced that since
August his year, the leadership of IFEJ have rebranded this IFEJ-Gold Award to
IFEJ-Flamingo Award for many reasons. “We want this award to be unique,
prestigious and international recognize. The first edition will take place on Friday December 12, 2014.”
He noted that the main focus of IFEJ
is to raise the level of financial journalism as well as the standard of
journalism in this country. “This is the time to have bench marks in whatever
we do as journalists,” he said.
The School takes place in the second
half of the year, with up to 30 journalists from different cultures
trained in various aspects of financial journalism, presented by external
media trainers and professionals.
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