Ahmed Ragab

Ragab, as called by friends and colleagues, is an Egyptian journalist, television producer, and investigative reporter with a career that dates back to 2008. He has conducted numerous investigative reports, played a leading role in reshaping and developing the online content of Al-Masry Al-Youm — the largest independent daily newspaper in Egypt — and served as a producer on some of the most popular Egyptian daily talk shows, including ON TV's Akher Kalam with Yosri Fouda. Today, Ragab is focused on managing the content of The 5th Estate, Deutsche Welle Arabic's digital media platform, which he co-founded in 2018.

Ragab first joined Al-Masry Al-Youm in 2006 as a political editor, and soon developed the skills needed to start conducting investigative reports. In 2011, he received Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism's (ARIJ) Arab Spring Award for Best Investigation in the Arab World, for his reporting on the mass prison break at Al-Marg. At 29, Ragab became Head of the Investigations Department at Al-Masry Al-Youm. Two years later, a second promotion moved him to Managing Editor of the digital platform — an experience that lasted two years, during which he reshaped the site's content and launched two sub-platforms: Sharek, dedicated to citizen journalism, and Almasry-Lite, focused on human-interest and long-form features. His journey at Al-Masry ended in 2016 with a final promotion to Assistant Editor-in-Chief.

In a notable parallel to print and digital journalism, 2011 marked a turning point when he started working as a producer on ON TV's daily political talk show Akher Kalam, with layered responsibilities under the pressure of Egypt's shifting circumstances. Later, and for a short period, he joined the production team of With Mona El-Shazly on CBC.

As the space for free expression in Egypt narrowed, and obstacles began to prevent the wide reach of balanced professional media, Ragab took a different path — one that led him to Deutsche Welle Arabic's headquarters in Berlin. There he began a new chapter by co-founding The 5th Estate, the show hosted by Yosri Fouda in 2016, and served as the program's executive producer until 2018. Answering the call of the digital age, he then went on to launch a digital platform under the same name, dedicated to producing and publishing in-depth investigations on the most pressing political and social issues in the Arab world and beyond.

Alongside, Ragab produced The Monk's Tale, an investigative podcast on the killing of Bishop Epiphanius, which won Apple Podcasts' Best Investigative Journalism Podcast in 2022 and the Mohammed Hassanein Heikal Prize for Arab Journalism in 2023.

Across his career as an editor and producer, Ragab has efficiently helped young writers and journalists find their way in the media landscape — a skill he has honed as a "boss and friend" to the point of moving from doing the work into training others. Over the past four years, he has led numerous workshops in journalism basics and investigative reporting with well-established institutions including ONA Academy, and works as an official trainer and mentor at Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and teaches a course on investigative journalism at the Alternative Academy for Arab Journalism.

• 2023Mohammed Hassanein Heikal Prize for Arab Journalism — for the podcast The Monk's Tale.
• 2022Apple Podcasts — Best Investigative Journalism Podcast, for The Monk's Tale.
• 2011ARIJ Arab Spring Award — Best Investigation in the Arab World.