From February 2013, Claus Stäcker takes charge of Deutsche Welle’s Programs for Africa. Until recently, he was the ARD (The Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations in Germany) correspondent for southern Africa in Johannesburg.

Claus Stäcker, 45, is the new head of DW’s Africa program, which targets listeners and Internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa. It offers shortwave radio programs and online content in six languages: Amharic, English, French, Hausa, Kiswahili and Portuguese. The shows and reports, produced by DW, are rebroadcast by around 280 partner stations in the region.

Stäcker studied journalism in Leipzig. He first travelled to South Africa as part of a university exchange program in 1992. In the same year, he started to work for German public broadcasters MDR and DLF.  In 1994 he witnessed the end of Apartheid and the resulting South African parliamentary elections as a freelance correspondent for the German press. After further study at the US School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, Stäcker worked as a freelance correspondent for ARD in South Africa until 2008, when he officially became the ARD correspondent for southern Africa.

DW’s radio programs reach over 30 million listeners in the region on a regular basis. Audiences in Sub-Saharan Africa can also access information via DW’s website (www.dw.de) or tune into DW – Deutsche Welle’s 24/7 international TV channel in English.