The ambitions of a young journalist in Southern Sudan

By any standards, Deng Kooch Diing is a remarkable young journalist. He's the parliamentary reporter for the Juba Post, in Southern Sudan. Juba will soon become the capital of the world's newest country, if the voters there hold sway following the referendum taking place this week.

That vote for separation from the cynical regime to the north, in Khartoum, may lead to another war - which is pretty much all that Deng has known in his extraordinary life. His family was forced to flee first to Ethiopia in the mid-1980s, and then Kenya, where he lived in a refugee camp.

Thanks to the Sudan Media Development Programme, run by Norwegian Church Aid with European Commission funding, he has received six months of training in journalism, but, as you will hear, he craves more professional guidance.

I met him when I visited the Juba Post's offices in December on assignment for the BBC Radio 4 programmeSunday. His seriousness, and hunger to become better at what he does, really stood out. Juba has only a few miles of paved road and, despite its huge potential, for now its desperate shortages appear overwhelming.

I put Deng in touch with the local head of the BBC Trust, so, apart from getting his message across in this interview, perhaps the BBC can also do something concrete to help him better serve an audience that may yet enjoy a freer press to hold its politicians to account.

By comparison with the censorship and oppression that's all too obvious in the north of Sudan, the south is doing a good job. But imagine living in a country where there are no printing presses, and only sporadic, low-speed internet that serves just a handful of towns. That is Southern Sudan today.

Meeting young reporters like Deng is humbling, and a reminder of just how important what we do sometimes is.