Southern Africa Correspondent

We are looking for a southern Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg. This is one of the most exciting and challenging jobs in the foreign network. It comes at a riveting time in the history of South Africa, once a beacon of hope for the world and increasingly a cautionary tale of a transition gone wrong.

The successful candidate must above all possess range. They should be able to produce hard-hitting news coverage and scoops for Companies and World, but also long reported pieces for the Big Read and the Magazine. They must be as comfortable in a corporate boardroom or central bank governor’s office as in a township or down a mine shaft.

The political story of the slow implosion of the African National Congress is compelling. But the correspondent needs to show equal interest in business stories: from the mining conglomerates to complex corporate vehicles, such as Naspers, and scandal-wracked ones such as Steinhoff. As became clear during years of state capture under Jacob Zuma and in the ongoing collapse of Eskom and Transnet, the corporate and the political stories are often intertwined and the FT must be unrivalled in revealing this complex interplay.

Based in Johannesburg, the job also entails coverage of southern Africa, including Mozambique, with its multibillion dollar gas project led by Exxon and Total, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The correspondent must be alive to news and able to cast light on big and varied themes including debt, urbanisation, development, health, technology, energy transition, deforestation and the role of countries such as China, Russia, India and Turkey.

Though this is a regional job, there will be a strong emphasis on providing the world’s best coverage of South Africa. Elections are scheduled for May so the correspondent should be ready to hit the ground running.

South Africa is an ideologically charged environment with a brutal history of colonialism and apartheid, one that has left a damaged society for which there are no easy answers. The correspondent must be steeped in the country’s history, able to engage with it intellectually and to write about it both analytically and dispassionately.

Please submit your application by the end of the day, Thursday October 19 2023.