South African to present award-winning environment show on Al Jazeera

After impressing as the presenter of Innovate Africa on Al Jazeera last year, South African Ndoni Khanyile is joining the award-winning team on earthrise, the channel's inspirational environment show.

In the seventh season premiere on Monday, 20 April 2015, Ndoni travels to the Seychelles to find out how the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) programme works. Started by the Zoological Society of London, EDGE is trying to conserve rare species on the island, like the Golden Rumped Elephant Shrew and the Purple Frog, while calculating the amount of unique evolutionary history that would be wiped out if these species were to become extinct.

The first episode will also follow Juliana Schatz to the Public Lab in New Orleans, where a global electronic hobbyist movement is creating inexpensive tools to monitor and assess environmental hazards.

Each episode of earthrise features two or three mini-adventures,' where the presenters seek out heart-warming and uplifting stories about the pioneers finding solutions to our planet's challenges. Another South African, Kath Hearn, is the series producer.

Last month, Ndoni travelled to Mozambique to shoot her second segment, which looked at a rural community in northern Mozambique trying to halt the devastation of its rich hardwood trees, which are being felled for fuel. The Mezimbite Forest Centre is a beacon of sustainability, with a nursery division that grows and plants thousands of trees, while nurturing skills needed for agroforestry and education.

Working on solution-orientated programming is great because it's all about what can and is being done about various challenges, usually by ordinary people committed to change, says Ndoni. Preserving our natural resources is critical to our future, especially in Africa, where so many still make their livelihood from the land. We need to start thinking of maintaining healthy eco systems as a catalyst to employment and not a threat to jobs.

Before joining Al Jazeera last year, Ndoni hosted ENCA's premier technology show, Tech Report, from 2011-2013. She also starred in the award-winning SABC 1 miniseries When We Were Black; films like Skeem and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom; and alongside John Kani in the Sean Mathias play Antigone, among other roles.

Ndoni studied Theatre and Performance at the University of Cape Town, before receiving a Masters degree in Broadcast Journalism from Columbia University, which she attended as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and the William and Ceil Africa Pulitzer Fellowship.

As a founding member of the poetry performance group, Rite 2 Speak, Ndoni has performed original music and poetry in London, Switzerland and Portugal. She's also a columnist and editor-at-large for Essays of Africa, a new women's magazine that launched in November 2014.

The seventh season of earthrise premieres on Monday, 20 April 2015 at 2230 GMT / 2330 CAT, with repeats on 21 April at 0930 GMT / 1030 CAT, 22 April at 0330 GMT / 0430 CAT, 23 April at 1630 GMT / 1730 CAT and 24 April at 0530 GMT / 0630 CAT.

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/earthrise/.

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