Steve Wembi
Steve Wembi is an investigative journalist based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked as a contributor for the New York Times, Al Jazeera and Xinhua and he is the Managing Director of the Consulting Media Agency.
Biography
Steve Wembi was born on 20 July 1984 in Kindu, in the province of Maniema in Zaire. In 1997, he underwent military training in Kamalenge when the rebellion Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, before returning to secondary school at Ibanda Institute in Bukavu.He graduated from high school and moved to Kinshasa in 2007 to continue his university studies, the first two years at the University of Kinshasa at the Faculty of Law. There he started his journalistic career as a correspondent in Kinshasa for the New China News Agency and worked for the agency media for ten years. He has also worked for Al Jazeera Television, Cable News Network and as a reporter for Integrated Regional Information Networks, The Economist, Financial Times, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and The Wall Street Journal.
In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Wembi covered several rebellions, including that of the March 23 Movement and the National Congress for the Defense of the People but also, he frequented high risk areas, particular in Kasaï Province, a region where the two UN experts Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp were killed in March 2017. That same year, he discovered more than 100 mass graves in Ngaza commune. Wembi holds a diploma in criminology from Kenya Institute of Security and Criminal Justice and since 2019, he is communication advisor to the president of the Senate of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, senator Alexis Thambwe Mwamba.