David Pilling

The three features, which reflect David Pilling’s broad range of interests, demonstrate his ability to bring complex issues to life through compelling prose and riveting storytelling. Though the datelines - from Kenya, Benin and Chad - are remote, Pilling makes his stories relevant to readers around the world, including in the UK. Set in Africa, the three features relate to the social media that FT readers use, the clothes on their back and the endangered animals (in this case elephants) that many of them care about. Each of the pieces complicates the picture.

The feature on African moderators, which required several trips to Nairobi over many months and dozens of hours of trust-building interviews, exposes the working conditions of the young people keeping the internet safe. Focusing on three individuals from different African countries, the story builds a picture of what it is like to sift through the detritus of the internet hour after hour and day after day. While the moderators’ testimony is often horrifying, the protagonists are also presented as fully rounded people: ambitious, savvy, rebellious and funny. With exclusive access to their organisations and their legal advisors, the article charts the young people’s fightback and their campaign to improve working conditions both through the courts and through the establishment of a union.

In the second piece, Pilling tackles the obstacles that countries face as they attempt to tackle poverty through industrialisation. Potentially a dry topic, albeit one central to the FT’s interests, the author brings the themes to life by focussing the narrative on a single T-shirt in a single country. Skillfully weaving on-the-ground reporting with high-level discussion and interviews with leading economists, he presents an original analysis of what is holding African countries back and how they might overcome the patterns of exploitation and underdevelopment forged in colonialism.

The final piece, which deals broadly with the theme of conservation, profiles African Parks, a secretive but highly effective NGO that has taken control of huge swathes of the continent in the name of preserving wildlife and endangered ecosystems. Though African Parks is the gold standard for conservationists, the type of work it does has elicited a backlash, akin to the culture wars. Many regard it as the epitome of neocolonialism, an organisation of mainly white people telling Africans how to manage their resources. To write the story, Pilling gained the trust of African Parks: the piece includes hours of rare interviews with Peter Fearnhead, the chief executive, and an extended behind-the scenes look at one of its remotest conservation projects, in Chad. The article endeavours, through narrative and storytelling, to present a balanced view, one that failed to please either African Parks or those criticising it. What emerges is a nuanced picture of the difficulties of balancing the twin imperatives of preserving wild areas with the rights and aspirations of the people who live there.