Benin 🇧🇯
Maurice Thantan is a Beninese journalist with over 10 years’ professional experience with the Beninese public service media SRTB. He is interested in political governance issues in Africa and technological innovations for citizen participation. In 2015, Maurice Thantan founded the Association des blogueurs du Bénin (AB-Bénin), which he chaired until 2019, leading numerous citizen projects focused on transparency, e-government, digital security and public accountability. His commitment then led him to join AfricTivistes, the pan-African network of bloggers and web-activists for democracy. At the same time, he worked as Benin correspondent for the pan-African magazine Jeune Afrique.
A recognised campaigner for open data, Maurice is also an expert in Civic Tech, a field in which he designs and runs training courses on the use of technologies to strengthen links between governors and governed. A beneficiary of several international leadership programs, he was named one of Benin’s 20 young leaders by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (2017), then selected in 2023 as one of the 20 best journalists on the African continent as part of the prestigious African Union Media Fellowship.
