Building Resilient and Sustainable Hyper-Local News Ecosystems in Zimbabwe’s Complex Media Landscape

Zimbabwe’s local media landscape has been in dire straits since the country's independence from white minority rule in 1980. Repressive laws, state monopoly, polarization, lack of diversity and poor funding are some of the challenges that have thrown the Zimbabwean media into a mess. It is against this backdrop that over recent years, the need to (re)build resilient and sustainable hyperlocal news ecosystems has become more urgent. Mr. Dube's talk focuses on the complexity of the Zimbabwean media sphere and what he and other innovators have been doing to address this challenge. 

Divine Dube is a 2020 JSK Journalism Fellow. When selected as a fellow he was the founder and editor-in-chief of The Citizen Bulletin, a regional, hyperlocal news outlet based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city. Prior to working for The Citizen Bulletin, he reported for Newsday, Zimbabwe’s largest privately owned daily. Before reporting for Newsday, he worked for two different regional news publications, the Southern Eye and Southern Star, where he covered local news beats and developed a passion for community reporting. His journalistic work appears on Newsday, Southern Eye, Bulawayo24.com and The Citizen Bulletin, among others. He also worked as a programming director for Getjenge FM, a community radio initiative covering ethnic minority communities in southwestern Zimbabwe.