Tim Cocks bids farewell to Reuters after two decades covering Africa

Tim Cocks, who has reported on Africa for Reuters for most of the last 22 years, has told colleagues he is leaving after an “amazing time” that has included covering conflicts all over the continent and nearly two years in wartime Iraq.

Cocks, who has been Chief Correspondent in Southern Africa for seven years and was previously Bureau Chief for West and Central Africa, was first recruited as a stringer in Madagascar.

In a valedictory message headed “My time at Reuters Is Up”, he said: “Since then I've hung out with rebels from eastern Congo, South Sudan and northern Uganda (sometimes all at the same time). I've flown in Black Hawk helicopters on U.S. combat missions in Iraq, ducked mortars - and once narrowly escaped a kidnapping by Boko Haram on Lake Chad.”

He had witnessed coups, protests, elections and wars, picking his despatch from a hotel in Abidjan stormed by gunmen in 2011 as a highlight.

But he added that he had spent much more time editing copy and “many hours waiting for some leader to arrive with bustling self-importance and a coterie of sycophants.”

“A huge thanks to those I've worked with who have helped shape the journalist I have become and make the work exciting, rewarding, and, most of all, fun. Those to whom I owe a special thanks - well, you know who you are,” Cocks said. He gave no details on what he will do next.

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