Zohra Bensemra

Since 2018, Zohra Bensemra has been based in Dakar, Senegal, serving as Reuters chief photographer for West and Central Africa. She recently revisited Kabul to document the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, and was also assigned to Ukraine to report on the ongoing conflict with Russia.

She has worked extensively across the Middle East and Africa, documenting the Sudan referendum, the Tunisian uprising, and the Libyan revolution, as well as reporting from Afghanistan, Syria, Darfur, and Somalia. From 2012 to 2014, Bensemra served as Reuters chief photographer for Pakistan, based in Islamabad. She returned to Algiers in 2014, where she continued to cover breaking news in the Middle East and Africa. 

Bensemra began her career at El Watan newspaper as Algeria’s first female photojournalist during the Algerian Civil War, from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, she joined Reuters while continuing to document the conflict in Algeria. One of her initial international assignments was covering the 2000 Balkans conflict, stationed in Macedonia, where she captured the plight of ethnic Albanian refugees crossing the Kosovo frontier.