The Fourth Estate

To equip young journalists with critical, in-depth reporting skills, The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) five years ago, launched the Next Generation Investigative Journalists (NGIJ) fellowship.  In this episode, we take a look at the journey of the NGIJ fellowship since its inception. We sit down with past and present fellows, as well as MFWA leadership, to track the program's succes...

When the local government ministry started the sanitation guards initiative in 2007, the goal was clear - to help make Ghana cleaner.  But as laudable as the idea is, a lot of the guards who have been recruited over the years have dropped out of the program managed by Zoomlion and many are considering exiting as well due to non-payment of allowances stated in their contracts.  The Fourth Estate&ap...

Article 286 of the 1992 constitution of Ghana requires public office holders to declare their assets and liabilities before they assume office. They are also required to do same at the end of every four years and at the end of their term of office. But enforcing this has been a challenge for several governments over the years.  Out of the current 276 Members of Parliament, 151 are yet to declare t...

Shortly after the Fourth Estate released its documentary 'Medical Kalabule', the Health Minister formed a committee to investigate allegations made in the documentary. The committee's report indicted only one of the medical professionals named in the documentary for overcharging patients for surgical tools and recommended him for disciplinary action. Two other medical professional w...

Right at the start of his second term in office, President John Mahama pledged to eliminate sole-sourcing, suggesting a push for new legislation to end the practice of awarding public contracts without competitive bidding. It was a bold promise, framed as part of a broader effort to improve transparency and accountability in government procurement. But an investigation by The Fourth Estate suggest...

Typically, when someone dies under mysterious circumstances, the police launch an investigation to ascertain if it was a murder or accidental. But what happens when a person dies under questionable circumstances while in police detention? For the documentary Death in Detention: Suspected Killings in Ghana's Police Custody , Joojo Cobbinah and Edmund Boateng spoke with families of a number of...

Investigations by The Fourth Estate revealed that over a five-year period, at least 19 people died while being detained by the Ghana Police Service. Four of those deaths, according to the police, were suicides. But families of the deceased suspects have rejected the claims.  In the first of our two-part documentary, Death in Detention: Suspected Killings in Ghana's Police Custody, Joojo Cobbi...

When the documentary, Medical Kalabule, was released earlier this month, it exposed the desperation and lengths some critically ill patients and their families were willing to go for care.  While a committee set up by the Ministry of Health investigates the issues raised in the documentary, we go behind the scenes with the documentary's producer, Joojo Cobbinah.  In this episode, Joojo talks...

Some doctors in Ghana entrusted with saving lives have instead been preying on patients in desperate need of urgent, life-saving surgeries. In a health system already stretched by staff shortages, limited infrastructure and chronic equipment gaps, some surgeons have found a way to turn crisis into profit. The Fourth Estate’s investigation uncovers how patients at Ridge Hospital were allegedly forc...

In just about five short years, The Fourth Estate has produced investigations that have dominated national conversations and triggered real-world consequences, from prosecutions to policy reviews. But how did this project begin, and why does it work so differently from conventional newsrooms? In this opening episode, host Nii Akrofi Smart-Abbey sits down with the Executive Director of the Media Fo...

The Fourth Estate Podcast takes Ghana’s most impactful investigations beyond the written page. In just a few years, The Fourth Estate has broken stories that sparked official investigations, triggered prosecutions and forced hard national conversations about power, accountability and justice. This podcast fills the missing piece by giving you a simple way to engage with that journalism by listenin...