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I’m the investigations editor for the Food Systems newsroom at Lighthouse Reports, I’ve been doing investigations in Africa for a decade. This website is a portfolio of my stories over the 7 years that I’ve been a freelance journalist..

My stories range from nerdy data-journalism to extended reporting trips in conflict zones.

I’m the investigations editor for the Food Systems newsroom at Lighthouse Reports, I’ve been doing investigations in Africa for a decade. This website is a portfolio of my stories over the 7 years that I’ve been a freelance journalist.

My stories range from nerdy data-journalism to extended reporting trips in conflict zones.

By trawling through documents, I’ve uncovered corruption scandals that led to police investigations in Canada and Australia. I won a Peabody Award for a collaborative open-source investigation into the murder of women and children by Cameroonian soldiers. I’ve also done several data investigation using aircraft ADSB data or over 4000 newspaper covers.

I’ve also trekked through rainforests for days and became the only journalist to embed with an armed group fighting in Cameroon’s nascent civil war.

If you want to be informed of upcoming investigations, you can sign up to my newsletter (at most it’s one email per month) and you can also follow me on twitter.

On this website you can also find my tips to become a freelance journalist. Don’t hesitate to contact me.

My latest investigations

Money laundering in French real estate

Money laundering in French real estate

French real estate attracts dirty money from all over the world. By matching government datasets available online, our cross-border team of journalists uncovered…

Emmanuel 13 January 2023
The civilians killed by France's operation Barkhane in the Sahel

The civilians killed by France's operation Barkhane in the Sahel

We revealed that French soldiers of operation Barkhane killed at least 25 civilians in Mali while the official toll stands at 7. French troops have fought against…

Emmanuel 20 September 2021
Frontex complicit in illegal pushback of migrants

Frontex complicit in illegal pushback of migrants

Migrants who attempt to cross the Aegean from Turkey to Greece, to seek refuge in Europe, know that the Greek coast guards often stop their boats, disable them by…

Emmanuel 18 November 2020
COVID quarantine? Not if you own a jet!

COVID quarantine? Not if you own a jet!

We investigated the French businessmen who flew from Paris to their beach homes on their private jets (French only). They broke the COVID quarantine rules that left…

Emmanuel 19 October 2020
Tracking surveillance planes and drones in Somalia

Tracking surveillance planes and drones in Somalia

We used an antenna to track surveillance planes that were flying over Somalia, analysing massive amounts of data to find out a few planes flying in perfect circles.…

Emmanuel 14 August 2020
Diversity in media outlets that report on Africa

Diversity in media outlets that report on Africa

International newsrooms that report on Africa are often full of white journalists (and I’m one of them). But just how white or how ethnically diverse are they?…

Emmanuel 12 August 2020
Israeli mercenaries in Cameroon

Israeli mercenaries in Cameroon

Over the past two decades, Israeli mercenaries have been training the BIR, an elite unit of the Cameroonian army. Their names were mostly kept secret. The BIR are…

Emmanuel 29 June 2020
Ebola business in Congo

Ebola business in Congo

I looked at militarisation and mismanagement (‘Ebola Business’) in the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo through several articles. One…

Emmanuel 6 March 2020
Systematic torture in an army basement in Yaoundé, Cameroon

Systematic torture in an army basement in Yaoundé, Cameroon

About a hundred people were tortured by security forces in Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé. In an article for African Arguments, I revealed that detainees were systematically…

Emmanuel 7 May 2019
The lost Ebola blood

The lost Ebola blood

Where are the samples extracted from patients during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa? To investigate this, I did nearly a hundred freedom of information…

Emmanuel 11 February 2019
36 Years of Rocky ‘Stability’ in Paul Biya’s Cameroon

36 Years of Rocky ‘Stability’ in Paul Biya’s Cameroon

Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon has managed to stay in power for 36 years - and it's no easy feat. In an article for the World Politics Review, I look at the…

Emmanuel 4 October 2018
Anatomy of a Killing in Cameroon

Anatomy of a Killing in Cameroon

A movie shot on a phone went viral last July. It shows two women, a little girl and a baby escorted by several soldiers. The soldiers smack a women in the face.…

Emmanuel 24 September 2018
From farmers to fighters - an anglophone armed group

From farmers to fighters - an anglophone armed group

I spent a week with an armed group called the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF). Since October 2017, this group has been fighting against the Cameroonian army army…

Emmanuel 2 August 2018
Burning Cameroon: Images you're not meant to see

Burning Cameroon: Images you're not meant to see

Since October 2017, over 180,000 people were displaced by the conflict between anglophone separatists and the Cameroonian army. Cameroon’s security forces have…

Emmanuel 25 June 2018
Paul Biya, Cameroon’s Roaming President

Paul Biya, Cameroon’s Roaming President

Cameroonian president Paul Biya has long been known for his travels abroad for private business. With two Cameroonian journalists we calculated just how much time…

Emmanuel 18 February 2018
Burning down the house: Myanmar’s destructive charcoal trade

Burning down the house: Myanmar’s destructive charcoal trade

I investigated how charcoal is illegally harvested in Myanmar and then smuggled to China to make cosmetics, alloys and electronics.  In China,…

Emmanuel 26 October 2017
The Mines Minister, his wife and the Australian company Sundance resources

The Mines Minister, his wife and the Australian company Sundance resources

(Published in French in Le Monde Afrique) In a Yaoundé notary's office in 2007, a handful of people gathered to close a deal worth over 10 million…

Emmanuel 24 September 2017
Quebec's real estate, new hotspot for the wealth of Africa’s rulers?

Quebec's real estate, new hotspot for the wealth of Africa’s rulers?

Politically-exposed Africans and their friends invested a total of $26 million in Québec's real estate since 2000. We uncovered investments by a dozen individuals…

Emmanuel 4 June 2017
Advocates ignored evidence on conflict minerals

Advocates ignored evidence on conflict minerals

Leading non-profits advocating against conflict minerals in Congo have ignored evidence that the policies they pushed for harmed artisanal miners. For several…

Emmanuel 6 April 2017
Poverty on top of gold, the World Bank project in Liberia

Poverty on top of gold, the World Bank project in Liberia

The World Bank invested $19 millions in an industrial gold mine in Liberia, in the hope of contributing to development. But it only brought poverty and pollution. The…

Emmanuel 22 March 2017
The hidden price of fighting against conflict minerals in Congo

The hidden price of fighting against conflict minerals in Congo

I wanted to find out what would be the impact of a single company buying all the production of thousands of artisanal miners, an exclusive buying right justified…

Emmanuel 15 February 2017
The hidden costs of Congo's conflict-free minerals

The hidden costs of Congo's conflict-free minerals

I took a series of photos for my stories on the hidden costs of conflict-free minerals, and on how activists averted their eyes from the human costs of the policies…

Emmanuel 14 February 2017
A costly lunch with the president's son

A costly lunch with the president's son

It's rare to get a glimpse into how companies and corrupt officials negotiate bribery deals. Documents provided by one of the people involved in such a deal,…

Emmanuel 2 September 2016
Virtual mining in Cameroon: corruption, failure and profits

Virtual mining in Cameroon: corruption, failure and profits

In Cameroon, most mining project fail, yet some individuals make millions. This investigation into 'virtual mining' exposed a number of corrupt practices by officials,…

Emmanuel 14 March 2016