British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist Larry Madowo has been named among 100 most influential Africans by New African Magazine.
The celebrated anchor's name appeared alongside 10 other Kenyans among them Catherine Gicheru, an investigative reporter who founded The Star Newspaper.
The magazine described the former anchor as “leading the BBC drive” who is the business editor in the recently opened world largest BBC headquarters outside of Britain.
“His appointment reflects the BBC growing interest in African coverage and the group has just opened its largest bureau outside the UK in Madowo’s backyard: Nairobi,” wrote the magazine.
Taking to social media, however, the former Nation journalist received the news rather strangely.
He wrote that he was not worthy of the award and that the revered magazine’s choice to appoint him really meant that its standards had surprisingly sunk.
“Wait, even I was named among the 100 Most Influential Africans 2018! I’m not worthy, obviously, so how did that happen? Clearly, (New African Magazine) standards have really fallen,” wrote Madowo following with a laugh emoji.
The magazine announced that this year’s list was the first ever in its six-year history where the number of ladies nominated equalled that of the male counterparts at 50/50.
The list reveals Africans who contributed to shaping the African narrative in the concluding year and envisaged to play a big role in the coming year, both on the continent and in the Diaspora.
“One yardstick which we often employ when coming up with the final list is to emphasise that influence is not about popularity and popularity is not always influential...Most importantly we focus mainly on people who have been influential for Africa's good," stated ReGina Jane Jere who oversaw the project stated.
