Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor of Media and Security Studies, Rongo University and Founding Director, Center for Media, Democracy, Peace & Security (CMDPS).

Expert Bio

Prof. Fredrick Ogenga is an Associate Professor of Media and Security Studies, Rongo University and Founding Director, Center for Media, Democracy, Peace & Security (CMDPS) both at Rongo University, Kenya. He also serves as the Chief Executive Officer of The Peacemaker Corps Foundation Kenya. Prof. Ogenga is a former Southern Voices for Peacebuilding Scholar, Wilson Center, Africa Peacebuilding Network Grantee, and Boston University's Africa Studies Center Visiting Researcher. His latest contributions include the book, Peace Journalism in East Africa: A Manual for Media Practitioners, and two book chapters: “Can African Centered Reporting Solve Terror Threats in the New World Order” (2019), and “Institutional Designs, Democracy and Peacebuilding in Africa” (2020). published by Zed Books 2020.

He was a Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar at the Wilson Center.

Wilson Center Project

Philosophising Alternative Pan-African Media And Society Approaches To Countering Female Violent Extremism In Kenya For Peace And Security

Project Summary

This study seeks to rationalize the need for a better understanding of the role of women in violent extremism in Kenya, and the role that the media can play in framing and portraying the role of women in violent extremism and terrorism. The study will attempt to answer five main questions: 1) What makes Kenya vulnerable to violent extremism and terrorism? 2) How does this vulnerability interplay with the role of women in terrorism and violent extremism in Kenya? 3) What do we know about the role, scope, and scale of women’s involvement in violent extremism in Kenya? 4) Could African-centric media approaches and discourses help us better understand, cover, and forestall women’s role in facilitating and perpetrating terrorism? 5) And, in constructing these approaches, what lessons can governments, international actors, and the Kenyan media learn from how media in other regions of Africa affected by terrorism have approached these issues? This study will also draw on lessons learned from three West African case studies experiencing a rise in the phenomenon of female suicide bombers. These cases studies will allow us to further examine how women are represented in news stories and to explore the possibility of using pan-African mass media approaches of Utu, Umoja, and Harambee, in a bid to not only appraise the role of the mainstream media in countering violent extremism but also the role of women.

Major Publications

Ogenga, F. 2015. From al-Qaeda to al-Shabaab: The Global and Local Implications of Terror in Kenya and East Africa. Africa Journal of Democracy and Governance. Vol 2 Issue 3 & 4, 2015.

Ogenga, F. 2014. Assessing Peace Journalism on Kenya Television Network’s Diaspora Voices in the 2013 Elections. Africa Journal of Democracy and Governance, Vol. 1 No 2.

Ogenga, F. 2014. Visual Semiotics and the National Flag: a Kenyan Perspective of Anglo-American Globecultural Domination through Mainstream Music Videos. Semiotica, 2014; 202: 533 – 553.