Jimmy Kainja

Jimmy Kainja is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Malawi and a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has over ten years of experience teaching Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies. He is also the Communication and Public Relations Coordinator at the University of Malawi’s Centre for Agri-Food Systems. Kainja holds a BSc in Media Studies and an MRes in Media and Communication from London Metropolitan University. He is an adjunct research fellow at the Institute of Public Opinion and Research, a member of the editorial team (Politics and Society) for the University of Malawi’s Kachere Series, and a mentor for the University of Malawi’s Journal of Humanities mentorship programme.

Kainja also has years of experience researching digital rights in Africa, as a country researcher and analyst for Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net Report, and has contributed to research, written reports, and policy briefs on the State of Internet Freedom in Africa, a yearly publication by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA). As a 2020–2021 research fellow at CIPESA, a leading centre for ICT policy research and analysis, he studied hate speech, disinformation, misinformation, data protection, and access to information in Malawi. He is a member of Surveilance in the Majority World, African Digital Rights Coalition, Netright Coalition, and Digital Rights Coalition (Malalwi).

Kainja has facilitated numerous workshops on journalism, freedom of expression, access to information, and digital rights across various African platforms and forums. He is a co-author of a forthcoming edited volume: The BBC's Legacy in Africa: Continuities and Change, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and books.