Anand Naidoo is the anchor for CGTN America’s “The Heat”, based at the network’s Washington D.C. Bureau. 

Anand joined CGTN America in October 2012 after five years as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera English in Washington.

Before that he was an Atlanta-based anchor for CNN International’s World News for ten years. During this time Anand reported from the Middle East, South Africa and Europe.

Before joining CNN in 1997, Anand was the principal evening news anchor for the South African Broadcasting Corp. in Johannesburg.

He began his broadcast career in Belgium, where he worked as a field producer for Belgian television as well as a producer and anchor for the Belgian Radio World Service. In those positions, he traveled widely as a producer and reporter in Western Europe, the former Soviet bloc states and the Middle East.

Anand has also worked as a news editor on Radio 702, a Johannesburg independent radio station and a presenter on the South African cable station, M-Net.

He began his career as a newspaper journalist on the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail.

Among the major stories Anand has covered during his career was the release of Nelson Mandela and the first all-race elections in South Africa in 1994. He has also anchored breaking news coverage on the bomb blasts at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the DPRK missile tests, the Nato Air Campaign in Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war and the 2nd Gulf War in Iraq.

He has also reported extensively from Latin America and North America. He also covered the election campaign of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Anand is the recipient of several prestigious journalism awards including the George Peabody award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the Tsunami disaster in South East Asia.

In April 2015, he was awarded the Bronze World Medal for Best News Anchor at the New York Festivals International TV and Film Awards. The jury cited his coverage of the rise of the Far Right in European politics in making the award.

Follow Anand Naidoo on Twitter: @anandnaidoo