Mariam Ouédraogo

Mariam Ouédraogo (born ) is a Burkinabé journalist. Known for her work as a war correspondent for the daily newspaper Sidwaya, particularly on the impact of the Islamist insurgency in Burkina Faso on women, she received the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents in 2022.

Biography Ouédraogo was born into a polygamous family in Ivory Coast and grew up in the Nord Region of Burkina Faso. After finishing high school, she studied law for two years before deciding to become a journalist.

Since 2013, Ouédraogo has worked as a journalist for Sidwaya, a daily state-run French-language national newspaper, with an average circulation of 5000 copies a day. Her reporting for the newspaper has primarily focused on the experiences of disadvantaged groups in Burkina Faso, including women, children and the disabled. In 2015, an article Ouédraogo wrote on the experiences of blind students led to the Burkinabé government establishing a commission to make the education system more inclusive for visually impaired learners. A 2018 report on the impact of a lack of ultrasound machines on the health of pregnant people led to the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso announcing the purchase and installation of multiple machines. Ouédraogo has also published interviews with disabled beggars in Ouagadougou and sex workers who had given birth to their clients' children. In 2022, Ouédraogo became the first female African journalist to win the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for her war reporting on the Burkinabé conflict against armed jihadist groups. She was the second African journalist to win the prize. Ouédraogo expressed concern that the win would put at risk family members who lived in conflict zones. She also won the Marie-Soleil Frère Award for written press for best Burkinabé journalist for three consecutive years between 2021 and 2023. She received the Mohamed Maïga African Investigative Journalism Award. In 2023, she received the Knight International Journalism Award. In 2025, the Kerala Media Academy named Ouédraogo as its Media Person of the Year, the first African journalist named.