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About  Me 

In her 22 years in Africa, Mercedes Sayagues has survived stepping barefoot on a 10 centimeter-long scorpion in the Kalahari, being taken hostage by Unita in Kuito during Angola’s civil war, and being expelled by Robert Mugabe from Zimbabwe in 2001 for reporting on human rights abuses. 

 

She alternates years of freelance journalism with stable employment in media projects that capture her imagination, throughout Africa. 

 

Between 2010 and 2013, she was a Knight Health Fellow in Mozambique. Her brief was to improve health reporting by coaching journalists to produce better stories and to see that health journalism takes the pulse of the nation, shows inequalities, progress, and trends; that health is as exciting as politics. 

 

A Uruguayan-born journalist, Sayagues specializes on gender, sexuality, health, humanitarian issues and human rights.  

 

A seaoned media trainer, she teaches journalists across Africa in English, French and Portuguese.

 

She has written studies on the AIDS policies in Senegal and Uganda, and on gold mining in Mali, for the South African Institute for International Affairs at Wits University. 

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