Emmanuel Mayah, founder of Satellite Times, is a winner of 22 media awards – most recently Winner of Global Shining Light Award 2017. He is a two-time winner of the CNN African Journalist Award and a two-time winner of the African Investigative Journalism Award (South Africa). An investigative journalist, virtually all of his winning stories centered on corruption in government, tax justice, illicit finance, the extractive industry, budget tracking, maritime, transnational business investigation as well as subjects of international social justice.

In 2013 Mayah expanded his skill in business investigation by training on Illicit Finance at the City University in London. His knowledge of Transfer Pricing, Shell Companies and Tax Havens inspired his ground-breaking investigation of underhand finances at MTN Nigeria. Following years of producing high-impact investigative reports, Mayah has worked in several countries in Africa and Europe in collaboration with international development organizations like Oxfam, Global Integrity, the International Centre for the Promotion of Human Rights (CIPDH) Argentina, and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. He is the author of Inequality in Nigeria: the Political, Social, Gender and Economic Policies – a report commissioned by Oxfam Novib.

He is the documentary maker of Tax ‘n’ Tempest – an investigative documentary on Multiple Taxation in Nigeria’s Informal Sector – a project funded also by Oxfam Novib. Emmanuel Mayah has had several speaking engagements such as speaking on ‘Illicit Financial Flows/Leakages and Inequality in Nigeria’ at a policy dialogue on inequality in Nigeria 2005; ‘Nexus between Crime, Corruption and Governance (Senegal 2014); ‘Africa and Emerging Countries: New Geopolitical Challenges, New Information Challenges (the World Social Forum,,Senegal 2011); ‘Tobacco, Terrorism and Organized Crime (6th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Geneva 2010); ‘China in Africa (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa 2011) and ‘Media Companies and their impact on Africa-Latin America democratic process’ (Buenos Aires 2015).

Mayah was the Nigerian journalist that journeyed for 37 days in 2009 across the Sahara Desert on the road to Europe. The resultant story, ‘Europe by Desert: Tears of African Migrants’ is published in the UNESCO Casebook 2012. The anti-human trafficking TV serial, Etohan, that ran on national television, was based entirely on Mayah’s story and experience. In 2010, Mayah was named by NAPTIP as Nigeria’s Anti-Human Trafficking Ambassador. He is also the Executive Director at the International Centre for Development Reporting (ICDR).