Independent film producer and citizen journalist Munyaradzi Dodo followed the experience of the participants of the inaugural Mandela Washington Fellowship and immediately sought to follow their journey to develop his business.
He cites Irene Chikumbo (Zimbabwe) and Lulu Hangala (Zambia) as role models and hopes that the fellowship will do for him what it did for them- i.e. “provide exposure and much needed stimulus for being an African leader through its show and tell approach that makes learning and grasping new principles easy.”
Munyaradzi will travel with 29 other Zimbabweans to the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. His impending trip will fulfill his desire to “expand his network as much as possible and make new friends in other parts of continent” as well as give him an opportunity to find “new video content and discover new stories for my video platform TVYANGU.com.”
Munyaradzi has already demonstrated signs of his leadership by being the co-founder of TV Yangu, Zimbabwe’s first Video On Demand startup which “creates, curates and streams African content online.” Founded in 2013, TV Yangu won Best Citizen Journalism platform at the Shoko Festival in 2014 for their “I am Zimbo” Project. In 2015 TV Yangu was finalist at the Social Media Africa Awards in the Best Use of Social Media Category by a Startup.
Munyaradzi’s interest in broadcasting was stimulated by working for one of Harare’s leading production studios C Media as a Television Producer & Director on numerous documentaries, adverts, and tv shows which aired on Zimbabwe’s national broadcaster ZBC, across Africa on Satellite broadcaster DSTV & in Europe on Sky.
During his fellowship Munyaradzi will be at the Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
On his return from the fellowship, Munyaradzi hopes to continue working with Zimbabwean content creators and expand into the rest of Africa and continue to find and tell Africa’s best stories. He hopes that what he will learn on the fellowship will filter down into the various platforms in which he is involved especially in the video on demand platform TVYangu.com. The vision is to make the platform a household name across the continent.
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Munyaradzi is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe Faculty of Arts where he majored in English & Theatre Arts.
You can follow Munyaradzi’s work on twitter at @TVYangu and his MWF experience @munyadodo
