Sahadou Ali Zato, 57, is an expert in community radio. He is a busy man, who regularly travels to Africa to give advice on media and organisational management.

Originally from Bembéréké, in the North of Benin, Sahadou Ali Zato grew up in a rural environment and spends all his holidays on the farm, in the village. His father, who had the chance to study, became a sort of local notable - first a teacher and then a primary school inspector, always very involved in the life of his community.

It is from his parents that Sahadou Ali Zato derives his sensitivity to others and his sense of duty. His entire career has been marked by the desire to pass on his knowledge, to help and to accompany others. As well as by his attachment to radio, born with his ear glued to the old family radio set in Benin in the 1960s...

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Aye Aye Zin was born in the mid-80s, deep in the Burmese countryside, in a region she described as "very conservative": at home, little girls are not allowed to read books, let alone play football - which are young Aye Aye's first two passions. But she won't let that happen. 

At the age of 18, she wrenched permission from her family to move to the capital, Rangoon, to continue her studies. We are at the very beginning of the 2000s, under the regime of the military junta in place since 1988. Burma, recently renamed Myanmar, is ranked among the worst countries in the world in terms of civil liberties. 

But the atmosphere will soon change. As early as 2007, protests began to make themselves heard, with demonstrations spreading throughout the country, soon joined by Buddhist monks. Three years later, in 2010, the authorities released the opponent Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of one of the fathers of Burma's independence, after 20 years under house arrest. The following year, in 2011, the military junta was dissolved, giving way to the first civilian government. With elections in 2015 and again in 2020, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy enters and then confirms its presence in Parliament. 

To better understand all this, let's go back to the Burmese campaign of the 1980s...

Nibras Al Mamory was born in Iraq in the 1970s. This 47-year-old political journalist and mother of three children is one of the figures of the Iraqi media landscape. She made a name for herself in the mid-2000s by presenting political programmes on several channels in the country and later became head of media relations with the head of parliament in Baghdad.

But even before becoming a journalist, Nibras Al Mamory was a feminist. In 2011, she founded the Iraqi Journalists' Forum, an organisation that supports women's rights and their place in the media. 

From her debut as a journalist in 1992, at the end of the Gulf War, until her return to the field in 2019 to follow the demonstrators who will obtain the resignation of Prime Minister Abdel-Mehdi, Nibras Al Mamory looks back on almost 30 years spent in the service of news in her country.

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Inoussa Maïga is the founder of AgribusinessTV, an online video media that highlights the agricultural sector and its innovations in a dozen African countries. Changing the image of agriculture, telling the stories of those who are successful, encouraging vocations across the continent: this is the mission of this 35-year-old journalist born in a rural area of eastern Burkina Faso. And yet, as you will hear, Inoussa Maïga has long been angry with agriculture ...

Inoussa grew up in the 90s in a very large family: 16 children in total between her uncle and her father, whose semi-detached houses overlook the same large courtyard. The family lives from growing rice, maize, millet and raising livestock.

Little Inoussa, pushed by his mother, has the chance to shine at school. The second last of the family, he is the only one who will reach university, and will move away from the rural and agricultural world for a while, only to return to it... to come back to it. But let's start again. Where the story of Inoussa Maïga begins...

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Shymaa Adel is 33 years old, 13 of which have already been spent working in an editorial office. The Egyptian investigative journalist has been working for a decade for the national daily Al-Watan, based in Cairo.

Since her beginnings, Shymaa Adel has experienced many political upheavals: the revolution of 2011 and the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the difficult democratisation that followed, the arrival in power in 2012 of the first democratically elected president: Mohamed Morsi, affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood; then the military coup of July 2013, led by General Abd El-Fattah Al Sissi.

In the midst of all this, for many years, Shymaa's work was outward-looking: war zones, conflicts, which she covered all over the Arab world. But since 2016, back home in Egypt, she has been focusing on the health sector.

When Camille spoke with Shymaa, she was immediately struck by the contrast between her voice, still very young and sometimes even hesitant, and the stories she told her, which testify to an extraordinary courage and determination. This is the story of a journalist who does not hesitate to take risks. And who started taking them very early on.

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Anne-Marie Befoune grew up in Cameroon in the 1990s, a French-speaking country where 20% of the population speaks English. And you will hear it in Anne-Marie's story: a world separates the speakers of the two languages. Since independence in 1960, the two English-speaking regions in the west of the country have been under-represented in political bodies, marginalised in all places of power. This historical tension has culminated since 2017 in a violent separatist conflict that has not yet found a way out.

A few years earlier, Anne-Marie Befoune had left Cameroon for Senegal. And it is since Dakar that in 2015, she launches her blog Elle Citoyenne.

While listening to Anne-Marie's story, Camille couldn't help but think of Ifemelu, the main character of "Americanah", the best-selling book by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Both of them have keen intelligence, observation skills, and a point of view on the world that they unfold on a blog, under a pseudonym, arousing the curiosity of their fellow creatures.

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Hang Dinh is the Vietnamese Anne Sinclair. She was one of the faces of national television for about fifteen years.

But it's been another 15 years since Hang Dinh left the TV sets to devote herself to teaching. Today, she combines two activities: she is a professor at the University of Hanoi and a volunteer at the Media Training Center of the Vietnamese Journalists Association. 

Like many of the journalists you will hear in this series, Hang Dinh is driven by her vocation. She puts all her time and energy into it.

In 1965, when the American army began bombing Vietnam, little Hang Dinh and her family were moved to the countryside around Hanoi. The 6 children didn't always have enough to eat. Daily life is punctuated by alarm sirens, bombings and evacuations.

In 1975, the war ended. The communist North Vietnam succeeds in its offensive war against the capitalist South. The reunified country becomes the socialist republic of Vietnam. Hang Dinh, who has finished high school, returns to Hanoi and begins his studies there.

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Ahmed Baider is a young Yemeni reporter who covers the humanitarian crisis in his country for many foreign TV channels: ITV News, BBC, Sky News and Channel 4.

Ahmed is 28 years old. He was born in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. In 2011, in the wake of the Arab Spring, the people rose up against the regime in place, Ahmed is barely of age. The revolution quickly turns into civil war. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia took the lead of an international Sunni coalition that bombed the country and imposed a blockade on humanitarian aid. 

It is in this context that Ahmed Baider begins as a fixer for foreign journalists on mission there. He helps them chronicle the destruction, famine and the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. One fine day in 2015, Ahmed's life changed forever. So, when he looks back at life before, his voice, at times, starts to shake...

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Manféi Anderson Diedri is 34 years old. This Ivorian founded the Eburnie Today website in 2016, specialising in investigative journalism and fact-checking. A real challenge on a continent where, as elsewhere, false information proliferates, but where independent media devoting resources to fact-checking are still rare.

When Camille Diao spoke with Anderson, he came across as a man who, despite his young age, has already lived a lot. A journalist who knows what he wants, where he is going, who moves forward step by step without ever compromising his values.

Manféi Anderson Diédri was born in 1986 in Dimbokro. His mother, a restaurateur, his father, a factory worker, 5 brothers and sisters - a rather carefree childhood in this medium-sized town in central Ivory Coast. But while he was still very young, the family was struck by a great upheaval. It is 1994 and Anderson's life is about to change...

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At 46 years old, Alia Ibrahim already has a quarter of a century of journalism behind her, and a CV as long as her arm: editor-in-chief of the Daily Star, a leading Lebanese daily newpaper in English; a top reporter for the Arabic-speaking news channel Al-Arabiya; a regular contributor to the Washington Post; a professor at the American University of Lebanon. 

Her latest venture is called Daraj, an independent Arabic-language news site, which she co-founded in 2017 with her colleagues Hazem Al-Amin and Diana Moukalled. 

Journalist, entrepreneur, activist, teacher, mother of two teenage girls: Alia Ibrahim is a woman of inexhaustible energy. When Camille Diao spoke with her, only a few weeks had passed since the explosion of 4 August 2020 that devastated Beirut, the city where she lives. The coup de grâce in a year that had already seen the country's economy collapse and the Covid-19 pandemic slow down popular protest against the regime.

It's not easy to stay on course in the midst of such upheavals. But when you're Lebanese, like Alia, you've had other eventful years before 2020...

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