Lotfullah Najafizada

Lotfullah Najafizada is an Afghan journalist with Amu TV, a US-based media outlet for Afghanistan that he and his colleagues founded after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. At Amu, Najafizada and his colleagues are trying to revitalize free press in Afghanistan by connecting Afghan journalists in exile with those who are inside the country and providing free and unbiased reporting for the Afghan people.

Najafizada’s nearly two decades of journalism experience includes leading TOLOnews TV (2009-2021), where he led the largest news operation in the country for over a decade and conducted many high profile interviews with global leaders including British Prime Minister David Cameron, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, NATO Secretaries General Jen Stoltenberg and Andres Fogh Rasmussen, US NSA Gen HR McMaster and Senator John McCain. On World Press Freedom Day 2016, Paris-based Reporters without Borders awarded him with the prestigious medal of Press Freedom Hero for his fight for free press in Afghanistan.

In 2016, TIME Magazine profiled him as a Next Generation Global Leader and in 2017 Forbes magazine selected him among the 30 under 30 Asia influencers in media. Najafizada was the only Afghan journalist who attended two rounds of civil society talks with the Taliban in Doha (2019) and in Oslo (2022). He is a former fellow with the Institute of Politics, University of Chicago (2021-2022) Asia Society (2012), Rumsfeld Foundation (2016), the Atlantic Council (2019) and World Press Institute (2010). He has a BSc in Economics. He’s married and has two children.