Samba Yonga is a Zambian journalist and media consultant. She has worked a long time as editor for ''

Big Issue ''The Big Issue'' is a street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. ''The Big Issue'' is one of the UK's leading social businesses and exists to offer homeless people, or indivi ...

Zambia'' and has written for several other publications. Yonga is the founder of Ku-Atenga Media, a media consultancy firm and was named one of '' Destiny's'' "Power of 40" most influential women in Africa in 2017.

Career

Samba Yonga first became interested in journalism after she won a prize for a short story she had written. She attended college and whilst there worked part-time for a local newspaper. After graduation Yonga found work developing ideas for TV and radio programmes. She was then appointed to run the relaunched ''Trendsetters'' youth magazine. Yonga has also written for ''Okay Africa'' magazine and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''. Yonga was editorial director of ''

The Big Issue ''The Big Issue'' is a street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. ''The Big Issue'' is one of the UK's leading social businesses and exists to offer homeless people, or indivi ...

Zambia'' magazine, which was launched by the

International Network of Street Papers The International Network of Street Papers (INSP) is a Glasgow, Scotland, based trade organization founded in 1994 for over 100 street newspapers from 35 countries. INSP organises a yearly conference and provides technical assistance and a wire ...

in 2007. The magazine was published in six countries and Yonga travelled frequently to visit these. Yonga established a media consultancy company, Ku-Atenga Media, from the word for "to create" in

Luvale The Luvale people, also spelled Lovale, Balovale, Lubale, as well as Lwena or Luena in Angola, are a Bantu ethnic group found in northwestern Zambia and southeastern Angola. They are closely related to the Lunda and Ndembu to the northeast, but the ...

, her native language. Shortly afterwards, she left Zambia to study for a master's degree in global media and translation communication at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. Upon her return, she began to expand Ku-Atenga, providing consultancy services on communications strategy. The company now carries out work for local and international clients, including the Zambian government, European Union and the United Nations. Yonga began the ''Narratives of Silenced Voices'' to research and publish the stories of African women from history. The project was run in conjunction with the , a women's history museum in Sweden, and Zambian activist

Mulenga Kapwepwe Mulenga Mpundu Kapwepwe (born 7 October 1958) is a distinguished Zambian author and social activist. Kapwepwe has garnered widespread recognition for her remarkable contributions in the field of women's history, having co-founded the Zambian ...

. Yonga developed the project into the Zambian Museum of Women's History, initially as an online-only offering but with a view to having a physical location to allow display of artefacts collected by the project. Yonga writes a blog on

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

. She was named one of '' Destiny's'' "Power of 40" most influential women in Africa of 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yonga, Samba Living people Zambian journalists Zambian women journalists 21st-century Zambian writers 21st-century Zambian women writers People from Lusaka Year of birth missing (living people)