SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN is the Africa bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers (America's second-largest newspaper chain and publishers of, among others, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News). He opened the bureau in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2000.
In June 2001, his multi-part expose on the chocolate industry's connections to modern-day slavery brought his work nationwide attention (the series was written, in part, by SAJAer Sumana Chatterjee of Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau. See a story about the series and read the pieces).
From May 1997, he was a reporter for the The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he has worked on different beats including the Federal courts. He is on loan from the Inquirer to the parent company for this Africa assignement.
Prior to joining the paper, he was based in Johannesburg, South Africa, for nearly three years, freelancing articles for Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, the Sunday Times of London and other U.S. and British publications. Before South Africa, he was on the reporting staff of Newsweek in New York City.
Raghavan, who has traveled extensively in South Asia, has reported from more than 40 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. Recently, he spent more than four months on the road in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and the Arab world covering the aftermath of the Sept 11th terror attacks.
He holds a B.A. in political science and economics from UCLA. He also graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in journalism, a master's degree in international affairs, and a certificate from the Southern Asian Institute.
His foreign reporting has been honored with several national prizes, including The George Polk award, The Overseas Press Club award, The Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and the Raymond Clapper Memorial award. He has been a finalist for both the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) award and Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. He is also a four-time SAJA award winner.
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