On Friday, September 13, she was among those present when President William Ruto secured and witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation
Three years ago, she was featured in the weekly #KenyaWomenSeries, Viral Tea‘s very first landmark project which saw us partner with Patience Nyange and Esther Kiragu to publish and amplify the stories of visionary women in Kenya. Now, Judie Kaberia is reaching new heights.
On Friday, September 13, she was among those present when President William Ruto secured and witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation which will see Germany through its companies tap into the digital space and recruit more Kenyans to take up digital jobs.
“The Government of Kenya signed several MoUs in Berlin. I will speak about ours,” she revealed in her latest Facebook post on Sunday, September 15.
According to her, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Kenya led in the signing of an agreement for skilled Kenyan youth to work remotely for companies in the City of Hamburg.
Judie Kaberia speaking at an MoU signing ceremony in Berlin, Germany on September 13, 2024. /JUDIE KABERIA
The agreement means that German industries will request certain skills such as engineers and app developers among others, with Kenya therefore doing a talent search.Â
“The German companies will train and then absorb them based on their competence. This will be a continuous process based on the needs of the German companies and the skills/ talent Kenya can provide,” she explained.
Viral Tea takes a look at the profile of Judie Kaberia:
With 11 awards to her name as a multimedia journalist, Kaberia is an accomplished media trainer and mentor, with over 15 years of experience in journalism. Currently, she is serving as a Senior Project Manager at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, having joined in September 2022.
Her career in the media began at Radio Waumini as a reporter, producer and later as an editor. “I was a rookie when I joined Radio Waumini, which provided me with the platform to make all the mistakes and learn from them. With my heavy Kimeru accent, I could hardly pronounce Bs and Ds without inserting M or N before words. To me books were mbooks,” she revealed in the #KenyaWomenSeries feature in 2021
“Still, I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I got advice to concentrate on print but I hang on to my dream to speak on radio or TV. A friend encouraged me to work on my accent by writing many words with Bs and Ds, and short sentences, practising reading them aloud for hours, recording and listening. I spent lots of time working on this and improving it.”
In 2004, she left Radio Waumini for Germany and interned at Hellweg Radio in Soest in North-Rhine Westphalia. By this time she had sharpened speaking in German and could comfortably communicate.
Two years later, she returned to Kenya and joined Capital FM; yet another opportunity for her to hone her skills in journalism.
She praised the late Chris Kirubi a man with a vision and alert to technological advancements. He had talked about convergence in 2006 as the future of media and had encouraged her to try a hand at print and television, which she did and she became an excellent multimedia journalist.
“Then I got into feature writing and investigative reporting and maximized impact and solution-oriented journalism. I discovered the power I have as a journalist; through stories, I could influence policies, spur public debates on important issues and bring impact such as the establishment of health centres for women to deliver their babies in hospitals, availability of family planning methods and many others.
“Yet another defining moment in my career was the Kenyan cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC). I learnt about specialized journalism which introduced me to international criminal law. This expanded my knowledge and skills in reporting on international crimes, and international and regional judicial systems,” she added.
In 2020, she was among the 10 fellows who won the Resilience Fellowship of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), Austria. Until June 2021, she had been reporting and researching human trafficking and harvesting of human body organs in East Africa.
It was through this reporting that in December 2020, she won the Labour Migration Awards for the Migration and Health category due to her role in exploring the safety of victims of human trafficking during the COVID-19 pandemic. The awards were organized by the African Women in Media in partnership with the African Union, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
During the same year, she also joined Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), Canada World: Voice for Women and Girls’ Rights Kenya as a Gender Media Trainer.
After her tenure at Capital FM, she joined the Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWIK) as the Executive Director in 2021 and through her, the membership of the association increased three-fold, while partnerships with other organizations increased and were strengthened. She left after one year.
Kaberia holds a Master of Arts degree in New Media, Democracy and Governance from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom (UK), the same university where she was issued the Best Distance Learning Dissertation Award in 2015.
It was based on the Hierarchy-of-influences theory investigated factors that affect political reporting in Kenya.
Judie Kaberia speaking during a past event. /FACEBOOK
