Kadaria Ahmed: A Champion For Truth In a World That Silences Women

Throughout her illustrious career, Kadaria Ahmed has been rightly lauded for her contribution to advancing journalism in Nigeria’s fraught media landscape. But in light of her identity as a woman—having to bristle against the patriarchal strictures intrinsic to Nigeria’s media landscape—her work takes on deeper significance. Born in 1967, Ahmed led an ambitious academic career that saw her earn a Bachelor’s from Bayero University, Kano; and a Chevening scholarship that culminated in a Master’s in Television from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her journalism career started at the BBC in London where she served as senior producer and stewarded the production of acclaimed programs such as Focus on Africa, and Network Africa, helping to shine the spotlight on an Africa that had rapidly begun to take its place in a new global order. Following her time at the BBC, she relocated to Nigeria, where she took on an editorial role at Next, a brilliantly disruptive publication that perennially elicited acclaim and stirred cultural reckonings before its folding up in 2011. 

Today, Ahmed serves as the CEO of RadioNow 93.5FM, which she founded in 2020. Her gambits and accomplishments are too numerous to condense into a blurb, however, they include: having moderated the 2011 presidential election debate and town hall meetings for presidential candidates in 2019, as well as having won the Promasidor Quill Awards.