Larry Madowo

CNN's brilliant globetrotting journalist now presents the programme on which he was once a guest.

Since last year, Larry Madowo, 37, CNN's international correspondent in Nairobi, has also been presenting African Voices Changemakers, the programme that introduces emerging African talent to the world. The Kenyan journalist is no stranger to the programme, having himself been a guest on the show in 2017 to tell the story of his meteoric rise! He broke into journalism at the age of 20, first as a reporter and presenter for Kenyan TV channels KTV and NTV. Between 2012 and 2018, he presented the weekly show The Trend on NTV. Last month, he returned to the show to co-host a tribute to singer Mary Fyah Mummah Jahmby Koikai, who died prematurely. In 2018, he was snapped up by the BBC to head up Africa Business, putting him in charge of the Beeb's business teams across the continent. At the age of 30, he was managing two dozen journalists in Dakar, Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg, and producing and supervising reports in English, French and Swahili  from around 40 countries! In 2020, the BBC sent him to the United States to cover the pandemic and then the presidential election. He was threatened on air by Trump supporters contesting Biden's election, and expressed his astonishment at the extent of racism and inequality in the world's leading superpower... Young and brilliant, rigorous and uncompromising, Madowo, recruited by CNN in 2021, had the honour of being included in the World Economic Forum's list of Young Global Leaders 2020.