About

This is the website for Our Man in Africa, aka ex-BBC correspondent John James. I’ll mainly use this as a place to showcase my private photo and video projects, and you should also find it useful as a guide to my twitter feeds, web projects, articles and photos.

A little bit about me: I worked as a BBC correspondent in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, from 2007-2012. Previously, I spent a year reporting for the BBC in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), and have also reported for the BBC from Rwanda, DR Congo, Chad, Burkina Faso and Guinea-Bissau. Prior to coming out to Africa, I worked for BBC local radio (Leicester) and the regional ITV news (Anglia). I started my professional career reading the weekend news at Rugby FM. I studied broadcast journalism at Cardiff Journalism School (postgraduate diploma), and also have a masters in African studies (distinction; St Antony’s college, University of Oxford), a degree in history (University of Nottingham), a diploma in French (Open University) and a pre-certificate in theology (Moore College, Australia).

In my work, I enjoy the freedom of reporting on a variety of different mediums (radio, photo, text, television) and on a diversity of subjects well beyond war and politics. My two most popular web stories have been on injections to enlarge of the size of bottoms, and an Ivorian artist who paints in praise of large women (please don’t assume a trend!). You can find a website with all my stories (that appear online) here.

Get in touch: contact (at) ourmaninafrica.com