Kamahl Santamaria is a New Zealandnews anchor and journalist at Al Jazeera English, based in Doha. He is the primary presenter of Al Jazeera's interactive newshour newsgrid which screens daily on the channel at 1500GMT, and streams online through Facebook Live and YouTube. Kamahl also presents news bulletins, discussion show Inside Story, and between September 2009 and November 2016 was the host of the weekly business and economics programme Counting the Cost.
Personal life
Kamahl was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. He received his secondary education at Macleans College where he was in Kupe House. His family was originally from India, from the region of Goa, where many of the surnames reflect a long-standing Portuguese influence. He is one of two children.
Kamahl began his journalistic career straight out of high school in 1998, as a news and sports reporter for TV3 in New Zealand. He also moved up to producing nightly sports bulletins, under the influence of veteran New Zealand journalists Tony Ciprian and Angus Gilles. At the end of his time at TV3 in late 2001, Kamahl was selected to cover the Atlantic Rowing Race. He was on his way to Barbados - where the event was due to finish - when he was grounded at New York's JFK Airport following the American Airlines Flight 587 crash in Queens, New York. In the event, this made him the only reporter from New Zealand or Australia to be able to cover the disaster on the ground.
After three years working on TV3's flagship nightly news show3 News, Kamahl moved to Australia where he established and ran Sky News Australia's Melbourne bureau. He was a reporter, presenter and producer on the nightly Sky Business Report with David Koch.
Qatar: Al Jazeera English
In 2004 Kamahl moved to New York and London, and in 2005 was recruited by Al Jazeera English to become a news presenter in Doha, Qatar. In his time at Al Jazeera, Kamahl has presented across multiple news bulletins and programmes. He has also reported for the channel from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, Dubai, France, the United States, the Philippines, and the World Economic Forum in Davos; and was the channel's electoral "number cruncher" for the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016. In 2019, Santamaria was a judge for the Voyager Media Awards in New Zealand.
