How I got a foreign correspondent offer

I am often asked how to get signed on as a freelance correspondent for international news organisations. In this article published in Stop Press Newsletter in 2004, I explained how I became the Nigerian correspondent for a News Agency in Kenya. The article is published below: Sometime last year, I got an email from the editor of a US based magazine containing the bulletin of All Africa News Agency in Nairobi Kenya. After reading through the particular story she wanted to draw my attention to, I read through the whole bulletin made up of news and features. What immediately struck me was that although the publication was supposed to be continental in coverage, it had nothing on West Africa. Based on what I had learnt about seeking opportunities for international reporting, I checked on past editions of the news service and confirmed that coverage of West Africa was rather shallow. My suspicion was that the agency had no correspondents in the region like East, Central and South Africa which stories dominated the bulletins. I immediately sent a mail to the editor of the news service whose address was included in the bulletin. I commended him for the good work he was doing, but noted the poor coverage of West Africa. It took almost a week to get a reply from him. He admitted the need for more reports from West Africa but said he was still searching for a freelance correspondent for the region. Because the service was largely charitable in nature being a funded project, he said their payment for stories was as low as 10 dollars per story and 50 dollars for features published in their weekly service. Since the stories did not require much financial cost, I agreed to write for the agency. More than for the money, I considered writing for the news agency as an opportunity for exposure of my writing since materials from the weekly bulletin are reused by other international agencies. Due to my other commitments, I managed to send twelve reports in about two months which earned me 120 dollars. This money came in very handy to pay for the registration at a conference I attended in Nairobi in September last year. I could have earned more if I had written more stories and features. Most of my stories were reused on various International Agencies like allafrica.com, Aman News etc. The Internet is no doubt a goldmine waiting to be tapped by interested journalists. FAST FOWARD 2015: Since 2004, I have been hired as a freelance correspondent by other foreign publications with higher pay as much as $250 per story.