Grantee Abdullah Tijani Wins the 2026 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism

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Pulitzer Center grantee Abdullah Tijani has won the annual Local Reporter prize of the 2026 Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism.

Tijani won for his Pulitzer Center-supported project, Gold Slaves of the Sahel, which uncovered the underground economy fueling the gold trade in the Sahel. For six months, Tijani and his colleague from Niger, who remains anonymous for safety reasons, braved security challenges to expose the black market linking illicit gold mining, armed groups, and human exploitation between northern Nigeria and the Republic of Niger. 

“These were powerful stories, written in a hostile environment with a distinctive voice, as Tijani dug deeper and deeper into the story of ‘blood gold’ and the links across Nigeria’s borders to the arms industry,” noted The Kurt Schork Memorial Fund in recognizing the investigative journalist’s courage.

Tijani, who is managing editor at the Liberalist, and his team combined field investigations, expert interviews, and satellite image analysis to tell the story of people who are forced to perform dangerous mining work, receive little or no pay, and are trapped in a prolonged cycle of violence and poverty. Yet their story remains largely unknown to the general public. “One of the most encouraging outcomes has been seeing the investigation contribute to wider conversations about illicit gold mining, exploitation, and insecurity in the Sahel. The stories helped draw attention to the people working under extremely difficult conditions and shed light on the networks profiting from their labor,” Abdullah said, noting that with this award, the story of these communities is now known internationally.

Abdullah Tijani carried out this project as part of a Pulitzer Center grant for underreported stories in Africa. For the Pulitzer Center, this award underscores the importance of training African journalists in the use of open-source tools for their environmental investigations, as we have been doing in recent years.

Most recently in April, in a joint effort with Earth Genome and Code for Africa, the Pulitzer Center brought together investigative journalists and geospatial experts in a collaborative online mapping to build Africa Mining Watch, an AI-driven tool using satellite imagery and machine learning to detect and track mining operations across the African continent. 

Tijani was one of 25 journalists who attended the Africa Mining Watch Mapathon. He had just begun his investigative project and lacked reliable satellite data to corroborate his sources’ claims. 

Alongside other Mapathon participants, Abdullah drew from his local knowledge to conduct a more in-depth analysis of his investigation area, using Earth Index, the AI system behind AfMW, developed by Earth Genome. Navigating through Earth Index, Tijani later found evidence confirming illegal gold mining activities in the communities he had visited a few days earlier. He also discovers new illegal gold mining sites that he had been unable to visit due to security challenges. “Earth Index strengthened the mapping and open-source research for the investigation. Without this support, the stories would not have been possible at the depth I was able to achieve. I am sincerely grateful for the opportunities and resources they invested in this work,” he shared with the Pulitzer Center.

Abdullah Tijani won the 2026 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism alongside outstanding journalists from Ukraine, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, and Ethiopia. The winners will be invited to London to receive their awards. Established in honor of the late American journalist Kurt Schork, this annual competition recognizes courageous freelance independent journalists, local reporters, and fixers from around the world for the quality of their reporting on conflicts, corruption, human rights violations, and social injustices.