Shamlal Puri is an international editor, journalist, press photographer, author and broadcaster with a 40-year career spanning across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
He is the London Correspondent of The Standard newspaper of Nairobi covering news events in the UK. He also writes a popular weekly column Diaspora Destination in The Standard on Sunday covering issues of interest to the Kenyan diaspora in the UK. He is always willing to help and advice diaspora members where possible.
He started his journalistic career in East Africa. He has very long connections with Kenya going back to the 1970s and has been a regular visitor there. He covered the Safari Rally in Kenya as a photojournalist for some 20 years and is lucky enough to have travelled that many times throughout Kenya.
He was a senior journalist with the now defunct Kenya Times working with the venerable Philip Ochieng’ and Henry Gathigira, doyens of Kenyan journalism. He has written for the Daily Nation, the East African and the erstwhile Sunday Post among others.
He has also written for the Drum magazine and its sister publications – True Love and Trust. For more than 20 years he wrote the humour column That’s Life under the pen name of Michael Matatu. He wrote under the pen-name of Akili Mingi in Trust magazine and for some time also wrote the Malimoto column in Drum. He was Drum’s London Correspondent for many years.
He has also worked on Daily News newspaper in Dar es Salaam when the former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa was its editor.
Mr Puri writes reads and speaks fluent Swahili. He has written in the Kiswahili newspapers such as Kenya Leo and Taifa Leo of Kenya. He is currently writing a full length novel in Kiswahili depicting the pathos and humour of the diaspora in Britain.
In the late 1970s, he launched a pioneering news service Newslink Africa in London in London’s Fleet Street which provided syndicated news features service about Africa to publications around the world. It promoted the positive image of our continent.
He has interviewed celebrities, politicians, kings and queens, presidents, prime ministers for global media. He has been to the Buckingham Palace several times and photographed the Royal family.
His work has been published in 250 magazines, newspapers, journals around the world.
He presented a paper on The Influence of the Press in the Rural Areas of Africa at the University of California in San Diego, USA, in 1979.
Shamlal Puri is the author of several books including ’Dubai on Wheels: The Slippery Road to Success’ and ‘Triangle of Terror’ which are widely acclaimed bestsellers. His other books include Dubai Dreams: The Rough Road to Riches; That’s Life: Michael Matatu at Large; The Dame of the Twilight and Axis of Evil’ Blood Money. His next faction novel (fiction with facts) is The Illegals, (Crownbird Publishers) due to be released early in 2014, is about the plight of paperless migrants who come to Britain.
Shamlal Puri is also the author of a UNESCO report “The Socio-Economic Parameters of a Viable Independent Press in Africa” which played a part in laying the foundation of an independent press in the continent.
He is also the author of several editions (1995-2001) of Africa South of The Sahara Annual
Year Book an encyclopaedia of events in the continent.
Shamlal Puri is also an editor of The International Indian magazine published in Dubai.
Shamlal Puri has broadcast on BBC World Service, BBC TV, Channel Four in Britain and networks in Australia and Africa. He has been a consultant for UNESCO; the International Press Institute, Switzerland and Article 19 of London specialising in African press freedom issues.
On the web, he contributes regularly to American and European internet-based sites, and, his work is re-published in several hundred publications and on internet sites globally.
As a professional photographer, he has compiled a picture library of more than 250,000 images. His photographs have been widely published globally, including the British national press. His images have been published in the British newspapers such as The Times, The Observer, Sun, Daily Telegraph, Radio Times among others and the international media in the Americas, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
He has visited most countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, the Far East and the Americas.
Shamlal Puri’s career is a grand saga of news scoops, hair-rising adventures in far-off lands and hilarious episodes while news gathering. In itself, a great read when he writes it.
Joe Ngugi is a journalist who fought for civil and human rights in Kenya since 1988, he is loved and hated in equal measures. Joe is popularly known as Ngugi wa Nation is among the first Kenyan journalists to settle in the UK in 1990s.
Joe Ngugi is perhaps best remembered for his brave approach to news writing while working for the Daily Nation in Nakuru County during the first wave of ethnic clashes in the 1990s. He was among the few local and international journalists who risked their lives by sneaking into and reporting from inside Olenguruone, Molo, Burnt Forest, Enoosupukia as well as the larger Mau forests. He was able to breach the cordon and write very exclusive reports.
It was during these ethnic clashes that the Kenya Human Rights Commission, an organisation that kick-started Kenya’s second liberation campaign, picked Joe Ngugi as it’s’ only researcher in charge of the Rift Valley. Joe Ngugi’s reports, mainly on police and the provincial administration’s brutality against the proponents of the multi-party politics in Kenya were widely cited and adopted by several international human rights organisations like the Amnesty International, Article 19, and Human Rights Watch. His news reports were also syndicated by various international news agencies around the world and formed part of Kenya’s opposition proof of human rights abuse in the country.
Joe Ngugi, who also studied law at the University of East London, is currently a news correspondent as well as a columnist for the Standard Newspaper. He commentates on political as well as social issues.
He and 3 other friends, Gakuru Macharia, David Mbiyu and Paul Wakaba launched the first ever free distribution Kenyan newspapers in UK, The East African Times in 2002 and later the Kenyan London News in 2003.
Perhaps Joe Ngugi’s ability as an activism journalist was best exemplified during this year’s general elections in Kenya in which the current head of state picked him and group of other elite journalists, bloggers and social media personalities to lead a campaign aimed at popularizing his campaign for Presidency. During the entire campaign period, Joe Ngugi’s facebook page became the platform for informed reference where Jubilee supporters came for the correct thoughts and the feelings of their leaders. The minute by minute updates exclusively sourced from the Jubilee’s campaign headquarters and other well-connected individuals helped to keep supporters informed. For his dedication, Joe Ngugi was invited and travelled for the official inauguration of the president.
Joe Ngugi has also written a book, Lost Abroad, which is due to be published early next year. It is a book capturing a life of a young man who left his rural Kenya in 1972 for further studies in UK but never returned. His whereabouts is still unknown and efforts by his family to retrace his footsteps have been futile.
Joe Ngugi’s vision is to return to Kenya in the next five years where he intends to teach as well as practise Public law.
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