Abby Agina, who has been a reporter at NTV’s business desk, has decamped to rival television station, KTN. Mr Agina, 29, debuts tonight on KTN’s business programme Business Today, as an anchor. He will replace Bonny Tunya who left the station to join CNBC Africa’s Nairobi Bureau based at Ambank House in Nairobi.
“It has been a good run so far,” Mr Agina, who started his career at NTV three and a half years ago, said on his Facebook page. “Tonight I make my debut on KTN Business. I thank my family, former and current colleagues and friends for the role each played in my journey in journalism.” In an interview with BUSINESS TODAY, Mr Agina said he considers the shift from Nation Centre to Standard Group Centre on Mombasa Road a “good move that gives me a chance to try new frontiers in my journalism career.”
KTN’s business desk has had a high turnover of staff, with two business editors exiting over the past three years. Samuel Kantai left in 2012 to join CCTV, while Joseph Bonyo, who replaced Mr Kantai, quit this year to join CNBC Africa. Others who left include Mr Zawadi Mudibo, a business reporter-cum-anchor, left two years ago and currently works for Fountain Media and reporter, Peter Wakaba.
Award-winning journalist
A polished journalist with a soft-spoken tone, Mr Abby Agina has been a strong member of the NTV business desk where, besides daily reporting, he ran the Golden Hands series, which involved interrogating industry captains on various strategic issues. He has on occasions worked a stand-in anchor for major live events, including the Budget speeches in 2012, and 2013.
In 2012 NTV’s Abby Agina won the East African broadcasting reporting award at the fifth Media Summit held in Kigali. A year later, he was feted as the overall best reporter in East Africa during the EAC Media Awards in Kampala, Uganda, following a riveting two-part report titled the ‘Untold Tales of Truck Drivers’.
The NTV business desk, led by Wallace Kantai, will certainly feel his absence. “Of course I have learnt a lot from my NTV colleagues,” Mr Agina said. “It was a great launch pad for my journalism career.”
Mr Agina joined Daily Nation as an intern in 2010 fresh from Moi University, where he studied Information Science, specialising in media and publishing. “I honed my skills in writing and was deployed to the news desk where wrote on a number of topics ranging from ICC, politics, health, entertainment, sports to education,” he says.
His journey in journalism took a new course in 2011 when he joined the Media Lab, Nation Media Group’s graduate trainee programme. On graduating from the programme, he was posted to the NTV Business Desk in December of 2011. Mr Agina reports on regional issues that touch on trade, infrastructure and ICT.
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