AP announces East, West Africa appointments

I am excited to make two important staffing announcements for Africa: Yesica Fisch is our new West Africa senior producer, based in Dakar, Senegal, and Cara Anna is the new East Africa correspondent, based in Nairobi, Kenya.   As senior producer, Yesica will drive our video report in West Africa working with staff and a network of freelancers across 27 countries. From Nairobi, Cara will help lead the text report from 13 countries across East Africa. Both Yesica and Cara will work closely with their colleagues in other formats as well as freelancers to help produce ambitious spot and enterprise stories from Africa.   Yesica currently is the senior producer and video journalist in Brazil where she has covered scores of major global stories including the tumultuous politics of the country, the Amazon wildfires the outbreak of the Zika virus, the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic games and the 2014 World Cup. She has taken on ambitious and challenging assignments including reporting from Rio de Janeiro’s hillside barrios where people’s lives are impacted by the violent drug wars. Yesica also served as interim Brazil news director for much of last year.   Yesica also has traveled throughout Latin America and beyond on assignment including covering the caravan of migrants on its way to the U.S.-Mexico border and the social and political crisis in Venezuela. Last year, Yesica received the Oliver S. Gramling Spirit Award for her contributions in and out of the newsroom that have helped make the AP stand out in Latin America. Before moving to Brazil, Yesica was a producer and video journalist in Portugal, opened the first AP Television office in Venezuela and coordinated a team of staff and stringers in Mexico. She has traveled extensively globally on assignment, including previous reporting trips in Africa. Cara has been working as an editor and reporter based in our Johannesburg bureau since 2016. Last year, Cara traveled and reported from Nigeria, Mozambique and Afghanistan. Her reporting and writing was widely praised including receiving several Best of the Week honorable mentions for her work as part of all-format teams covering the elections in Nigeria, the aftermath of deadly cyclones in Mozambique and a deep-dive look into painkillers in Rwanda. Before joining the Africa team in 2016, Cara covered the United Nations in New York, where she broke news on a child sex abuse scandal in Africa and North Korea’s unusually open diplomatic efforts to counter a U.N. commission of inquiry on rights abuses. Before that, she covered China from Beijing and Shanghai including the Beijing Olympics, a devastating earthquake and Tibetan protests. She joined AP in 2005 and has spent time as an editor on the Asia and North America desks. Prior to joining AP, Cara covered fashion and features for The Palm Beach Post, technology for the Austin American-Statesman, ran a monthly cultural publication in Shanghai, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central African Republic and Burkina Faso and taught English in rural Pakistan.