Daan Bauwens is a Belgian writer, journalist and documentary maker. 

He worked as a researcher for the Belgian public broadcaster VRT and as a radio producer. From 2015 to 2016 he lived in New York to do research at Columbia University. He mainly focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, with a special interest for refugees, gender and mental health. 

Daan Bauwens

Basic information

Name
Daan Bauwens
Title
Investigative journalist
Expertise
migration, the migration-food nexus, transactional sexuality, neo-colonialism & drug trafficking in Africa
Country
Belgium
City
Ghent
LinkedIn

Supported projects

Hezbollah in Africa: Forgotten link in cocaine trafficking to Antwerp and Rotterdam

  • Organised crime
  • Trafficking

YAMOUSSOUKRO - The money that European nightlife spends for its favorite drug finances Hezbollah's wars on the side of Iran. An insider from the Lebanese community in Ivory Coast, one of the new cocaine hubs in West Africa, speaks and paints a chilling picture that spans half the globe, from the slums of Abidjan to Beirut, via the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

Money Trail newspaper supplement

  • Corruption
  • Finance
  • Tax evasion

AMSTERDAM, BRUSSELS - In February 2021 a Dutch and a Belgian newspaper included a 16 page supplement about the Money Trail project.

The booklet featured four full Money Trail stories, plus a 'Stories behind the Stories' section, which revealed how the journalists went about to do their research and get their stories published.

Highway 10. West Africa's Price for Europe's Cocaine Addiction

  • Corruption
  • Organised crime
  • Trafficking

ABIDJAN - In this story, investigative journalists Daan Bauwens and Nicholas Ibekwe focus on Highway 10, the transatlantic route that for centuries brought millions of captured African slaves to South-America via the tenth parallel.

Maputo's Material Girls

  • Equality

MAPUTO - In poverty-stricken Mozambique, young women are obliged to sell their bodies to wealthier or white men. A general wisdom with cliché status. But is such a simple analysis correct? What does international research say and what do the women themselves think about their sexual practices and social status? 

Europe in Africa: The Price of Partnerships

  • Economy
  • Politics

ABUJA - The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was hailed as the pact that will eventually liberalise trade between the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States.