Albert Sharra

Biography

Albert is a multi-award-winning journalist scholar and researcher in political communication in digital activism (online campaigns), focusing on new opportunities to empower citizen voices. He holds an MA in Journalism and Media Studies and a PhD in Politics from Wits University and is interested in interventions for social justice. Albert is a Wits-Edinburgh Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at IASH, University of Edinburgh.

Besides being a journalist, he has been running community projects for social justice under the Centre of Education and Development, an organisation he founded in 2015. His significant achievement has been mobilising more than 300 journalists from 7 African countries and connecting them to the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) programme in Geneva with support from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Multilateral Dialogue Programme. Through the UPR process, journalists in Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, South Sudan and Togo, among others, are able to hold governments accountable for key human rights issues in their countries.