Ken Wiwa

Ken Wiwa (born 1968, Lagos), also known as Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., he is a Nigerian journalist and author. Currently serving as an aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, he is the Senior Special Assistant on Civil Society and International Media. Wiwa was educated in Nigeria and at Stancliffe Hall School and Tonbridge School in England and then at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, which is now part of University College London. He was editor of the UK Guardian's New Media Lab where he developed content for the paper's online edition before moving to Canada in 1999, where he was a writer in residence at Massey College in the University of Toronto, Saul Rae Fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, a mentor at the Trudeau Foundation in Canada and a columnist for The Globe and Mail where he was twice nominated for the National Newspaper Awards for Feature writing. An accomplished public speaker, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. has addressed the European Union, Oxford Union and spoken at a number of colleges and Universities including Harvard, Cambridge, McGill and also served as a Conference rapporteur at a UN meeting on Cultural Diversity. A regular commentator on major news channels including CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, he has appeared as a guest on Hard Talk and Newsnight. In 2005 he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. He was the Founding Curator of the Abuja Hub for the Globalshapers Programme of the World Economic Forum and has also served on the Africa Advisory Council of the Prince of Wales Rainforest Project. He written for a number of publications, including The Guardian in the UK, The Washington Post, New York Times and National Geographic. He currently serves as an Editor-at-Large for Arise Magazine and continues to contribute occasional columns for magazines, newspapers and blogs. Wiwa has also produced and narrated television and radio documentaries for the BBC and CBC, he has written commentaries for National Public Radio. His memoir of his father, In the Shadow of a Saint, won the 2001 Hurston-Wright Non Fiction Award. In 2005 he returned to Nigeria and the following year former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Wiwa as his Special Assistant on peace, conflict resolution and reconciliation. He also served President Umaru Yar'Adua as the Special Assistant on International Affairs. He is the eldest son of Nigerian human rights activist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa.