Maputo — The new editor of the independent Maputo weekly "Savana" is Fernando Goncalves, a former chief news editor at AIM.

He replaces Salomao Moyana, who edited the paper from its first issue in 1994 until 18 June this year, when the Board of Directors of Mediacoop, the company that owns the paper, sacked him.

At a brief ceremony on Monday, the director of "Savana", Kok Nam, introduced the new editor to Mediacoop journalists and other workers.

43 year old Goncalves began his journalism career at AIM in 1980. He was trained under the late Carlos Cardoso, and rose to become chief news editor in the early 1990s.

While at AIM he was seconded to work for several months in 1985 at the Dakar headquarters of the Pan-African News Agency (PANA). He was also manager of the UNESCO-funded AIM Development Project.

AIM also sent him to the Foreign Relations Centre in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian school for diplomats, where he obtained a diploma in international relations.

In 1990, through a scholarship from the Alfred Friendly Foundation, Goncalves worked as an apprentice on the "Baltimore Sun", first at its head office in Maryland, and later covering the US Congress in Washington.

In 1993, he moved to Zimbabwe where he worked for the "Southern African Political and Economic Monthly" (SAPEM). He became editor of SAPEM, and also of the "Zimbabwe Mirror".

At the Monday ceremony, Goncalves said that editing "Savana" would be "a great challenge, but one which, with the collaboration of the entire team of "Savana" workers, it will not be impossible to face, for the benefit of the development of the Mozambican mass media".