Africa News blog

from Photographers Blog:

The children of Dadaab: Life through the lens

Through my video “The children of Dadaab: Life through the Lens” I wanted to tell the story of the Somali children living in Kenya’s Dadaab. Living in the world’s largest refugee camp, they are the ones bearing the brunt of Africa’s worst famine in sixty years.

I wanted to see if I could tell their story through a different lens, showing their daily lives instead of just glaring down at their ribbed bodies and swollen eyes.

It was a challenging project. As one senior photographer asked, how else can we tell the story without showing images that clearly illustrate the plight of the starving millions? Few photographs cover all aspects of life in the camps.

Many of Dadaab’s children are dying. And then there are others who, despite living in the world’s oldest refugee camp, embrace their childhood; they play, go to school, care for their siblings and collect water for their families. I wanted to incorporate all of these aspects of life for Dadaab’s children into this project.

To tell the story, I combined Reuters photography captured during the height of the famine with footage I had collected when I was in Dadaab six months ago, before the severity of the crisis hit international headlines.

The point is, when news of the famine made it to the front pages, the children I had filmed in Dadaab were now only perceived as children on the frontline of famine. Not just as children who were excited with the furor we brought to the camp.

from Photographers Blog:

Me and the man with the iPad

By Barry Malone

I never know how to behave when I go to write about hungry people.

I usually bring just a notebook and a pen because it seems somehow more subtle than a recorder. I drain bottled water or hide it before I get out of the car or the plane. In Ethiopia a few years ago I was telling a funny story to some other journalists as our car pulled up near a church where we had been told people were arriving looking for food.

We got out and began walking towards the place, me still telling the tale, shouting my mouth off, struggling to get to the punch line through my laughter and everybody else’s.

Then there was this sound, a low rumbling thing that came to meet us.

I could feel it roll across the ground and up through my boots. I stopped talking, my laughter died, I grabbed the arm of the person beside me: “What is that?” And I realized. It was the sound of children crying. There were enough children crying that -- I’ll say it again -- I could feel it in my boots. I was shamed by my laughter.

Live Aid anniversary: Unknown Ethiopia

This week is 25 years since a bunch of bouffant-haired pop stars staged the most ambitious concerts of all time to help millions of starving people who had never heard of them.

Live Aid, organised to raise money to stop Ethiopia’s catastrophic 1984/85 famine, was a huge success by some measures. An audience of more than 1.5 billion tuned in around the world to watch simultaneous live concerts from London and Philadelphia — an incredible technological feat for the time — and a staggering $230 million was raised for the emergency.

The world had never seen an outpouring of charity — of compassion — like it. Many of the people who handed over their scarce cash had never even heard of Ethiopia. One elderly woman gave organiser Bob Geldof her wedding ring after telling him she had nothing else.

It is estimated that 1 million Ethiopians died back then because they didn’t have enough food to eat. Most experts agree that Live Aid, and the Band Aid single that preceded it, saved many, many more from meeting the same fate.

Others are critical of how the money was spent and wonder why Ethiopia still relies on aid. Last year 13 million people from a population of 80 million were fed with foreign money. The fact that there are now 80 million Ethiopians (almost double the number in 1985) is part of the problem.

But things have improved, too. A “safety net” scheme that acts like social welfare for people whose harvests often fail should ensure that what happened in 1984/1985 is never repeated. The economy is growing. And a middle class is slowly but surely emerging.

Does Africa need Bono and Geldof?

“Ireland,” I answered the taxi-driver’s question when I first went to Ethiopia in 2006.

“You know … Bob Geldof, Bono?”, I continued, confident he would recognise me as a countryman of the two rockers who many Westerners think fed the world during the 1980s.

“Bondof?” came the puzzled reply. “Oh, Ireland! … You mean Roy Keane! Gerry Adams! IRA!”

And so began a pattern of national identifiers that has lasted for my three years in this country the Dublin singers first introduced me to as a child during its ruinous famines. 

Footballing legend Roy Keane. Political firebrand Gerry Adams. Irish Republican Army. In that order.

Rarely a ‘Bono’ or a ‘Bob’ spoken.    

It’s not just that the people of this beautiful Horn of Africa nation are largely ignorant of the two men who still say it affected them like no place ever has.

Does Africa need aid?

Rich countries look set to fall roughly $40 billion short of the amount they had pledged to give to Africa by 2010. So says a report released on Monday by the panel set up to monitor commitments made amid much fanfare at the Group of Eight summit in 2005.

The panel said G8 countries were not keeping their promises at the very moment rising food prices threaten to increase hunger and child mortality. The report also calls for a rethink of trade policies to help African countries and urges rich nations to spend more on renewable energy sources there.

But how important is aid for Africa?

Africa’s economies have been growing at their fastest in decades — the International Monetary Fund estimates African growth at well over 6 percent in 2007 and expects similar this year.

Not so long ago, net private capital flows to Africa were negligible or even negative.

But investment has soared, with China leading a rush to develop sources of raw materials. Globally, investors have been looking at Africa more seriously in the hope of potentially higher returns than in more developed markets that now face uncertainty.

What hope for Somalia?

Fighting in Mogadishu. Kidnaps of foreign aid workers. Hijacks by pirates. Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The news from Somalia seems to be relentlessly negative, writes Reuters Somalia correspondent Guled Mohamed. So it has been for the best part of 17 years since warlords overran the country in 1991 to usher in the modern period of chaos in this part of the Horn of Africa.

African Union peacekeepers have been unable to stem the violence; peace initiatives come and go with little impact; and the 14th attempt to restore central government is struggling as the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government finds itself up against a resilient insurgent movement including former members of the Islamic Courts Union that briefly held Mogadishu for six months in 2006.

However, tales of hope, entrepreneurship and solidarity abound among Somalia’s 9 million people.

How do you think Somalis can move forward? Can the diaspora wield its economic power to help? Has Ethiopia’s military intervention helped or hindered? Do the Islamic Courts represent the people as their fighters say? How can the world help, or should it just stay out and let Somalis sort things out themselves?

Have your say …