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NABJ Conference
 Akilah Amapindi, 1981-2005
NPR and its Next Generation Radio staff are saddened to report that Akilah Amapindi, a promising young journalist, passed away August 7 while participating in our Next Generation Radio student training project at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Atlanta. Akilah’s died due to an illness, possibly malaria, that she contracted while working recently as an anchor for the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation.
Leoneda Inge, a reporter for North Carolina Public Radio, served as Akilah’s mentor for the NABJ assignment. “She was lovely inside and out, just a lady and a professional,” Leoneda recalls. “She loved radio and television, wrote for the college newspaper and had founded a service sorority on her campus. One reason you know she was good is that she went to Namibia for a short internship and they asked her to stay for 10 months and even had had her anchor the network news. The only reasons she came back to the U.S. were for her family and for the Next Generation Radio project opportunity.”
While in Atlanta, Akilah and Leoneda were working together to produce a story on the mega-church phenomenon; Akilah had conducted an interview last Monday with Alton Pollard, the Director of The Black Church Studies Program at Emory University.  Listen to the interview with Alton Pollard, and listen to her audition piece for the project, which she recorded over the phone, from the studios in Namibia.
Akilah was born in Jamaica and later moved to Staten Island, NY where her mother lives. She was a 2004 graduate of Kenyon College, Ohio.
The NABJ has established the Akilah Amapindi Memorial Fund to help her family during this time, and NPR has made a contribution to it. More information on making a contribution to the memorial fund.
Listen to the student-produced NABJ radio program (34:53)
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