Zoe Flood

Zoe Flood is an independent journalist and filmmaker whose work spans broadcast, print, and digital media. Her journalism and documentary filmmaking have been featured by outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and more.

Flood is a recipient of the Association of British Science Writers' Feature of the Year (General) award for her article Inside the Botswana Lab That Discovered Omicron, which reported on the scientists who first sequenced the Omicron COVID-19 variant and the impact of subsequent travel restrictions on several African countries.

Career Flood has been reporting on politics, human rights, business, technology and health across Africa and the Middle East since 2010. Her work ranges from covering breaking news events, including the ouster of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya, to producing long-form, multi-platform investigations. In 2016, she was part of the BAFTA-winning team behind My Son the Jihadi, which was named Best Single Documentary that year.

In 2019, Flood travelled to Uganda to make the BBC Africa Eye documentary Gamblers Like Me: The Dark Side of Sports Betting, which examined the rise of gambling across Africa. Her investigation showed how betting companies target the continent’s young population through football sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, and easily accessible mobile betting platforms.

In December 2021, Flood wrote about the team in Botswana who first sequenced the Omicron COVID variant. The piece won 'Feature of the Year' at the 2022 Association of British Science Writers Awards. The judges' note stated that it was "an accessible feature that shines a light on the unknown scientists who identified Omicron at a time when countries were being stigmatised for detecting new Covid variants."

Flood was an Edit Producer and Archive Producer on 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room, a BBC/AppleTV+ feature documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the attacks. The film's presenter, Linda Ngari, received the Gaby Rado Award for New Journalist at the 2024 Amnesty Media Awards and the Michael Elliott Award for Excellence in African Storytelling in 2024.

In 2024, Flood presented her documentary Gamblers Like Me: The Dark Side of Sports Betting at Play the Game and gave an updated assessment of Africa’s rapidly growing gambling problem. During her talk, she warned that gambling harm in Africa is far worse than in Western countries, citing research suggesting one in five young people may be problem gamblers.

Filmography