Leocadia Bongben

Leocadia Bongben is a freelance multimedia science and solutions journalist based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, with a passion for health and environmental reporting. An award-winning journalist with 15 years of experience, in 2024 she was the Grand Prize winner at the second edition of the Emerging Health Technologies (EHTs) Media Award of Excellence. She is a 2025 Earth Journalism Network 30x30 Marine Conservation Target grantee and a 2026 marine resource exploitation grantee. With basic data journalism skills, she was a 2021 WanaData Fellow on COVID-19 vaccination and runner-up for the national COVID-19 reporting award. Leocadia was a 2021 Solutions Journalism mentee; her stories can be found on SJN’s Solutions Story Tracker. A graduate of the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, she is a digital journalist and a former BBC (Pidgin News) reporter. Her bylines include SciDev.Net, Orato, Nigeria Health Watch, Global Voices and Mongabay. She is the coordinator of Cameroon Factfinder, an online media outlet, and has created a solutions journalism club, Under the Kola Nut Tree.