Shola Oshunkeye has been awarded the top prize of the 2006 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2006 Awards. Oshunkeye won the overall award for an article he wrote for Nigeria’s TELL Magazine that examined the government of Niger’s reaction to the country’s recent famine. The article was chosen from among 1,530 entries from 43 nations across the African continent. He was one of 21 finalists at the awards ceremony, held in Maputo on 15 July.

The article, titled "Niger’s Graveyard of the Living," gave a critical look at the government’s reaction to the famine and subsequent attempt to play down the situation as the crisis deepened. Oshunkeye is general editor of the The SUN newspaper in Nigeria and a senior associate editor of TELL magazine.

Fourteen other finalists won prizes in various journalism categories. Two of them were Zimbabwean reporters who have been harassed and detained by the regime of Robert Mugabe. Dumisayi Muleyani, of the Zimbabwe Independent, won the "Free Press Africa Award" for an article warning of attempts by the government’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), to infiltrate what remains of Zimbabwe’s private media. Desmond Kwande, of Zimbabwe’s "Daily Mirror", won the prize for best photo-journalist of the year for his images of the Zimbabwean government’s onslaught against the urban poor, known as "Operation Murambatsvina" ("Get rid of the trash"), in which hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes.

Ramata Soré, a journalist for the newspaper L’Evénement in Burkina Faso, won the Francophone General News Award for her article on homosexuals living in Burkina Faso. Joe Ombuor of the Daily Nation in Kenya won the Environmental award for a news article that looked at the future of a nature preserve in Kenya.

The award for work on the HIV/AIDS epidemic went to Anso Thom and Khopotso Bodibe, of South Africa’s "Health e-news Service". Their winning piece denounced the phenomenon of a fraudulent vitamin treatment for AIDS. They interviewed families of victims who had gone onto this treatment and subsequently died. A total of six awards went to South African journalists.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza attended the awards ceremony, also attended by CNN International president Chris Cramer.

The ceremony, now in its 11th year, was hosted by CNN’s best known African correspondents, Jeff Koinange and Femi Oke.