Global Investigative Journalism Network

In many African countries, perpetrators of crime or illegal activities bank on being able to act with impunity, emboldened by the perception that the communities affected, advocacy groups, or even governments lack the capacity to hold them accountable once an allegation or scandal has faded from media headlines and public attention.

In 2025, authoritarian rulers and oligarchs across this region intensified their struggle not only for power and wealth but also for citizens’ minds in the digital space, forcing journalists to combine old and new investigative methods to expose violations in the virtual world. Ziarul de Gardă journalist Natalia Zaharescu continued her award-winning undercover work investigating Russian influence in her country in her new investigation, The Kremlin’s Digital Army in Moldova.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad in late 2024 reverberated through Syria like a proverbial earthquake, as his decades-old regime of dictatorship, oppression, and secrecy melted away almost overnight. For both local and foreign journalists, Assad’s ouster also presented a rare opportunity for accountability reporting, a chance to pursue stories of wrongdoing by his regime that had been difficult, if not impossible while he was still in power.

As airstrikes intensified on Gaza after October 7, 2023, international reporters were barred from entering the territory, leaving Palestinian journalists, medical workers, and civilians as the primary sources of information from the ground. Videos filmed on mobile phones, eyewitness accounts from hospitals, and images shared during brief windows of internet access became the raw material for documenting civilian harm, even as those recording it faced displacement, injury, and death.

A land registry entry in Austria, a company filing in Liechtenstein, and a shareholder record in the British Virgin Islands were enough to link a luxury property to a political figure — without relying on leaks or whistleblowers.

The stories selected for our editors’ pick this year span cocoa trafficking in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the sale of personal mobile data in Europe by secretive but powerful data brokers, and investigations into opaque sporting institutions in Tunisia. Then, there is also an investigation into alleged supply chain exploitation by a big name retailer in France.

When “The Dynasty” was released earlier this year, few expected a 55-minute investigative film about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s family’s business dealings to capture millions of views. Produced by the Budapest-based newsroom Direkt36, the documentary traces how the prime minister’s son-in-law, Istvan Tiborcz, and other close allies amassed wealth through public contracts and state-linked projects.

Money is leaving journalism faster than new models can replace it — and “no cavalry is coming.” That warning, delivered without euphemism, cast a somber tone on the “Exploring Traditional and New Business Models” session at the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Malaysia. This GIJC25 panel discussion surfaced a set of unresolved questions about what investigative journalism can sustainably support — and what it may need to leave behind.

At least 142 Ukrainian journalists and media workers have lost their lives since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022. In 2025, Russian strikes on Ukraine damaged the offices of four media outlets: Ukrainska Pravda and Radio Svoboda (the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) in Kyiv, and Suspilne Dnipro and Ukrayinske Radio in Dnipro.

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