Lukwesa Burak

Lukwesa Burak (/lʊˈkwɛsə ˈbjɜːræk/;[1] born 1974) is a news presenter and former weather presenter for BBC News. Previously, she worked for Al Jazeera English, Sky News and before that Africa Edition on eNCA (formerly known as eNews Channel), based in South Africa. She was formerly a weather forecaster and then news presenter in the United Kingdom, for East Midlands Today, a regional television news programme covering the Midlands area of Central England, followed by news presenter for Sky News, the 24-hour television news service operated by Sky Television, part of British Sky Broadcasting, based in London.

Lukwesa Burak
Born
Lukwesa Burak

1974 (age 46–47)
Zambia
OccupationWeather anchor, News anchor
EmployerBBC
Notable credit(s)
East Midlands Today
Al Jazeera English
BBC News
BBC World News
World News Today

She became a news presenter for eNCA in August 2012.[2] She is a regular presenter of World News Today on BBC Four, BBC World News and the BBC News Channel on as well as afternoons and evenings on Saturdays and Sundays.

Biography

Burak was born in Zambia in 1974, and named after her royal tribal family.[3] She enjoyed animals and had a spider collection. After capsizing on a fishing trip on the Zambezi river with her father she was hospitalised for four weeks, having caught malaria.[4]

Burak's family moved to England when she was aged eight.[4] She had an interest in flying, so joined the Royal Air Force Air Training Corps, but had to leave after injuring her leg during a game of football. She gained a bachelor's degree in Geography and European Studies at the University of Sussex, when she spent a year in Switzerland and learned to speak French.[3] She was then awarded a European Union scholarship to complete a Master of Science degree at the University of Leicester.[3][4]

Career

After three years in an information technology career,[4] Burak started her media career as a broadcast assistant for BBC weather, and trained as a broadcast meteorologist during this time.[5] She began broadcasting as a relief forecaster for BBC regions and nations, eventually joining BBC East Midlands as one of their permanent forecast team,[5] before becoming the lunchtime news anchor.

Burak moved to Sky News in 2006. Her main role involved presenting Sky News overnight, with her typical shift starting at midnight ending at 0600. During this time she presented Sky News. Sky News on the Hour from 0100 to 03:00 and then Sky World News from 0300 to 0600, which caters for audiences within Europe, Asia and Africa.[3] She left Sky News in 2012, but returned in 2013.

Burak featured on the cover of Issue 2 of UK Zambians' Lifestyle Magazine in the summer of 2008.[6] She was also appointed patron of the charity All Star Kids (1079911) at the start of December 2008. She is an ambassador for No More Malaria UK, as a result of her own personal experiences as a child. Since January 2011, she has been the director of hair products company Gidore.[7][8][9]

In August 2012, Burak joined eNCA (eNews Channel Africa), based in South Africa. She said that she had to relocate to South Africa as her husband had been offered a new job there, but that she was very much looking forward to the opportunity to join the channel's Africa Edition team and to have the opportunity to conduct live interviews rather than dealing with predominantly prerecorded material. But of her former employers, Sky News, she said: "Sky is an experience I would recommend to anybody. When you are working at that level in the industry, you could not ask for anything else."[2] Burak rejoined Sky News in 2013 before departing once more in June 2015. She joined the team of Al Jazeera English in Doha.[10]

In May 2016 Burak returned to BBC News, joining BBC East Midlands and BBC World News. She began presenting on the BBC News Channel on 13 August 2016. In September Burak became the main presenter of Inside Out East Midlands and the relaunched England edition, which is a weekly round-up of the three best reports from across the country.

As of 2020, Burak can be seen anchoring on the BBC World News channel in London.

References
  1. "BBC Newsday intro 27.8.18 1am". YouTube. Retrieved 26 January 2021. 2:50
    "Focus on Africa with @LukwesaBurak - Lagos on lockdown #coronavirus". YouTube. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  2. "Good News: Africa gets the best", Independent Online, 29 November 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  3. "Bio – Lukwesa Burak". Sky News. Archived from the original on 16 September 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  4. "Lukwesa Burak". BBC East Midlands Today. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  5. "Lukwesa Burak". BBC Weather Centre. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  6. "Extra News | Wordpress Theme". Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  7. Lukwesa Burak Archived 30 November 2012 at Archive.today Linked In
  8. Hazelann Williams, "'Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow!'", The Voice, 11 March 2012.
  9. "Interview with Lukwesa Burak – Sky News presenter and founder of Gidore", The Natural Lounge, 22 December 2011.
  10. "Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
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