By Wallace Mawire
Lala Touray from The Gambia has been voted as the 2018 Africans Rising Anti-Corruption Champion, according to Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity.
It is reported that 20 years old Lala is an award-winning Gambian Poet and CEO of Kids Community Library Foundation. In 2017, Lala started the “Gambia in-Depth” project which she has used as a platform to sensitize and raise awareness about corruption, unemployment, poor education system, poverty, the culture of silence, and bad governance in The Gambia.
It is reported that in her pursuit to fight corruption, Lala recently created a video which brought to life issues that Gambian brothers and sisters are constantly battling against, namely corruption in leadership and institutions. As the winner of the contest, Lala is officially crowned as Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity’s 2018 Anti-Corruption Champion. She is the first of 10 African activists to be invited to the 2nd cohort of Activists in Residence, a program that will take place in October 2018.
“We would also like to congratulate the second runner-up, 25 years old Nelson Komba from Kenya. Nelson has an equally impressive track record of fighting corruption, he wrote a book titled “24 Hours of Equality ” which takes a critical look at corruption and how it can be tackled to ensure a more sustainable economic development in Africa. 24 Hours of Equality highlights the cross-cutting systems if corruption throughout our continent and how the formation of integrity clubs in schools will serve as a project to train leaders about ethics in leadership,”Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity has said.
The organization says that,as Africans Rising, they intend to use the competition to unravel African activists championing the fight against corruption through multidisciplinary forms of expression. “We believe that it has inspired many among us to continue working together to clamp down on corruption,” they add.
“Africans Rising is grateful to all the participants in this competition. We were thrilled to learn about all the creative and innovative tools which many of you have developed to denounce the corruption that has plagued the economic growth of the peoples of Africa,” they said.
“We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the hundreds of voters that helped us select our very first Anti-Corruption Champion and we are looking forward to keeping you updated on the work of our champions,” they added..
