Champion reporter bags international IT award

Senior Reporter with Champion Newspapers Limited, Mr. Remmy Nweke, has won the 2008 African Siemens Profile Awards, for his contribution to reporting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa.

Based in South Africa, the Siemens African Profile Awards which originally started as a South African initiative, has evolved since 2004 to become a fully-fledged pan-African initiative. Daily Champion recalls that Mr. Nweke was a pioneer prize winner of Siemens African Profile Awards, and he became the first Nigerian journalist to win the prize back-to-back in IT business solution category.

According to the award organizers, the Certificate of Recognition is in honour for his journalistic contribution to excellence in the fields of Science and Technology. Nweke’s entry was the “Imperative of SIM cards registration’ published in Daily Champion of October 8, 2008, for the Siemens Africa Profile Awards 2008, which earned him the Merit prize.

Speaking on the award, the chief executive officer, Siemens Southern Africa, Mr. Sigi Proebstl, said that as one of the world's leading engineering and electronics organisations, Siemens is driven by innovation, with science and technology at the very centre of everything.

“Advancements in science and technology can help everyone to create safer and healthier societies, cleaner environments and prosperous knowledge-driven economies across Africa,” he said.

The Siemens portfolio, he said, spans a broad range of markets, from power, transportation, automation and drives healthcare through to information technology and industrial solutions and services.

“Given the wide scope of the company's products, systems, solutions and services, the Siemens portfolio has the ability to impact on almost every aspect of daily life,” he said.

Highlighting the fact that with this in mind, Siemens appreciates that science and technology reporting needs to be continuously accelerated and improved across the African continent in order to demystify these very important topics that have the potential to impact massively on the lives of the continent's people and beyond.

“For these reasons, Siemens sees the reporting of science and technology in an easily understandable format as a priority for Africa. Consequently, the recognition and reward of those writers, broadcasters and producers who effectively do this, is a vitally important task and it is in this spirit that Siemens sponsors the Profile Awards for the 8th year in a row with a total investment of nearly R4 million,” he said.

The CEO stressed that at Siemens, “we pursue excellence in all we do; excellence in products, excellence in services and excellence in solutions. But most of all, we pursue excellence in people, and where we find it, we reward it.”


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