Rwandan broadcast journalist Kassim Kayira celebrates a decade with the BBC this year. We asked him to recount his memories of Cardiff in 1999 and training with the Thomson Foundation.
Kassim Kayira, a familiar face to viewers of BBC World's Focus on Africa programme, joined the corporation in 2004, going full time the following year. But the Rwandan journalist's connection with the BBC goes back further having been on a placement there while on the Thomson Foundation's three- month-long broadcast journalist course in 1999.
Kassim, who has just returned from reporting from the unrest in the Central African Republic, credits the course with giving him the confidence he needed to progress his career, first in Rwanda and then in the UK with the BBC.
Confidence It is one thing to have an idea, but being able to sell it, especially in television, is very difficult, he explains. You need the confidence to defend your idea and see it implemented. That is one thing that the course gave me.
The training with the Thomson Foundation in Cardiff paid off almost as soon as he returned to Rwanda when he was promoted to head of television news at TV Rwanda.
Although only in his mid-twenties at the time, Kassim's proficiency in several different languages, along with the skills he had acquired in Cardiff, put him in the perfect position for career advancement in Rwandan television.
In fact, Kassim is a graduate of not one but three Thomson Foundation courses having attended programmes, first in Rwanda in 1997 and then in Zambia the following year. He says the support offered to Rwandan journalists was part of efforts to rebuild the country's media following the genocide of the mid-1990s.
Dangerous job It was a short while after the genocide and the country was trying to build itself back up, he explains. The country had lost a lot of human resources, including journalists. Many of the good journalists had either been killed or had fled. Or they were no longer practising because it was very dangerous to do the job.
He said the courses outside Rwanda offered an opportunity for him as a Rwandan journalist to share his experiences, firstly with other African journalists and subsequently with colleagues from around the world.
We had a lot of challenges coming out of the genocide with the experience of the role the media had played in the genocide itself, hate broadcasts and so-on So for us it was quite an experience talking to people who had come from all these different backgrounds.
Kassim describes the course in Cardiff as a chance to cut across the different platforms . Although online journalism did not form a major part of the course at the time, the training developed his broadcasting and print journalism skills.
He also fondly remembers his trainer Ian Masters and course mates from countries including India and Ghana, some of whom he is still in touch with.
Team work It was team work but it was competition as well, Kassim recalls. The people from Africa, although we were coming from the same continent, we were coming from different media environments. It helped to open up a world outlook that was slightly different.
We mixed the cultures, he adds. At the end of the course we had to come to a ceremony wearing traditional dress and we talked about the clothes and our history. It was an opportunity for people to understand and appreciate other people and to know what they stand for.
Kassim's placements at BBC Bristol and HTV Wales gave him a taste of British broadcasting media. Five years later he was back at the BBC to work for three different language services before starting presenting for radio and television in 2008.
His BBC colleagues over the years have included several other Thomson Foundation alumni, notably Komlar Dumor, who presented Focus on Africa programme until his death earlier this year.
Kassim reveals that one of the assignments that he is most proud of is a television report he recently filed from the Central African Republic which focused on the experiences of Muslim refugees fleeing the violence to the safety of neighbouring Cameroon.
Convoy of terror The convoy of terror report was put together in just two weeks. But this was two weeks when I was on the verge of death, reveals Kassim.
We found ourselves trapped in a particular situation that was really dangerous. Especially given how the conflict is there right now, especially for Muslims and I am a Muslim.
Other notable stories he has worked on include the drowning of migrants attempting to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa he was one of the first foreign journalists to report on the tragedy.
And Kassim has also worked on the BBC's flagship UK documentary programme Panorama on an investigation into the fake passport industry across Europe.
Fake passports In the documentary he and fellow Thomson Foundation alumnus Shoaib Sharifi attempted to travel from Nigeria and Afghanistan to Europe, using fake passports acquired en route.
The story itself was quite horrendous - going through the process of starting from Nigeria, Niger, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and ending up here in Europe," says Kassim. "Along the way there were so many stories that could not fit into the one-hour programme.
Kassim says the documentary kindled a professional interest in the issue of immigration which has seen him embark on a masters' degree in the subject. Even now he is called upon by BBC colleagues to offer his expert commentary on immigration issues.
It laid the foundation for me getting the confidence to take on harder stuff. I had covered the war in Congo as a war correspondent for three years for Rwandan television, which was a baptism of fire, but this was a different experience altogether.
With participants in this year's summer course almost finalised, Kas
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Rwandan broadcast journalist Kassim Kayira celebrates a decade with the BBC this year. We asked him to recount his memories of Cardiff in 1999 and training with the Thomson Foundation.
