AP Names New East Africa Bureau Chief

By: Jason Straziuso, chief correspondent for The Associated Press in Afghanistan since 2006, has been named the AP's bureau chief for East Africa.

Senior Managing Editor John Daniszewski announced the appointment Tuesday and said Straziuso would arrive at his new base in Nairobi in October.

Straziuso will supervise AP news coverage of Kenya and East Africa, to include the deteriorating situation in Somalia, where al-Qaida is attempting to establish a base. He will succeed Elizabeth Kennedy, who has been assigned to Nairobi for 3 1/2 years, the last two as bureau chief. Her next assignment will be announced shortly.

"Straziuso led the AP operations in Afghanistan during a very challenging period as the war there ratcheted up dramatically. He now takes the reins of a different, but equally challenging assignment in Africa," said Daniszewski. In his new job, Straziuso will report to Africa Editor Andrew O. Selsky in Johannesburg.

The AP's bureau in East Africa oversees coverage of 14 countries, including the regional military power Ethiopia and the desert nation Chad, which borders Darfur. Nairobi has directed coverage of the spread of piracy off Somalia and civil unrest and humanitarian emergencies in such countries as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Congo.

Straziuso, 34, managed AP's bureau in Kabul and reporting of the widening Afghan war since September 2006. He joined the AP in 1999 as a temporary employee in the Paris bureau after working as a freelance reporter during the conflict in Kosovo.

He later worked for the AP in Jackson, Miss., where he covered hurricanes, racial issues and government affairs. In 2002, Straziuso transferred to the AP's Philadelphia bureau and then to the International Desk in New York in 2004.

A native of Lebanon, Ohio, he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.