“In our department we buy twenty five boxes of mineral water every month,” says the procurement official for the Sports Ministry in Bamako, Mali. “In the shop you pay the equivalent of two-hundred and fifty dollars for that quantity. But we pay double that, about US$ 500.” Where the other half of the five hundred dollar goes? To ‘anonymous middlemen,’ is the routinely given answer to anyone who asks questions about Mali’s opaque state expenditure processes. In this case: to distributors operating...
“In our department we buy twenty five boxes of mineral water every month,” says the procurement official for the Sports Ministry in Bamako, Mali. “In the...
It started with a conference in Ghana about African kleptocracies: those places where a politically powerful elite enriches itself at the expense of citizens. Kleptocracies, it was said, were found in various regions of the world. But African countries were generally the worst off when suffering under kleptocratic rulers. It was in African countries that citizens would feel real hunger, or get infected with cholera because of polluted water, or not have access to any water sources nearby at all,...
It started with a conference in Ghana about African kleptocracies: those places where a politically powerful elite enriches itself at the expense of...
African kleptocratic rulers plunder natural resources and state budgets with the assistance of international and local business people. For the first time, an investigation by African reporters in seven countries reveal how they operate. The African Investigative Publishing Collective’s team discovered, inter alia, the following: In Kenya , politically connected business people were found to have made millions out of a failed Italian dam project that left poor farming communities in the Rift Valley...
African kleptocratic rulers plunder natural resources and state budgets with the assistance of international and local business people. For the first...
Many African women who live at or below the poverty line are forced to sell their bodies in order to make ends meet. The women do not notice anything of the many poverty relief programs that exist on paper in their countries. This is the conclusion of a study by the African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC), conducted in close collaboration with ZAM magazine . The authors of the report write: What stays with us after six months is how much they hate it. “They laugh at you and beat you.”...
Many African women who live at or below the poverty line are forced to sell their bodies in order to make ends meet. The women do not notice anything of...
Withholding of promised funds left Mozambican communities to battle cyclones, floods and drought alone for years. What was once a forest in Massaca, Chimoio, now looks like an endless series of empty football fields. Cyclones are destroying hopes for harvests in Beira, Zalala and Lugela in Zambeze. In Marromeu National Reserve hungry and thirsty buffalos, hippo’s and monkeys roam over villages, eating meagre food supplies. Villagers in Massingir district in the south complain that in the past three...
Withholding of promised funds left Mozambican communities to battle cyclones, floods and drought alone for years. What was once a forest in Massaca,...
Remember Gemfields? In 2017 we published a story by Estacio Valoi about the scandalous practices of British-Mozambican mining company MRM-Gemfields in Montepuez, Mozambique. The story later became part of a groundbreaking report by the African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC) and ZAM. ‘Rapes, robberies and deportations carried out by notorious police squad to keep the rubies for MRM-Gemfields alone’, we wrote. And: ‘The ruby fields of Montepuez in Mozambique, already a terrain of terror...
Remember Gemfields? In 2017 we published a story by Estacio Valoi about the scandalous practices of British-Mozambican mining company MRM-Gemfields in...
72 hours non-stop shifts, no breaks, no equipment, no salaries. The Nigerian government fails to provide proper services. The country’s doctors seek jobs abroad. One night -he doesn’t remember the exact date- in June 2017 at the Lagos University Teaching hospital in Nigeria’s capital city, three of eight pre-term babies died in the ward where Mohamed Gafar, 26, was the ward doctor. He, an intern still waiting for his permanent license, was the only doctor on duty that night and was just reaching...
72 hours non-stop shifts, no breaks, no equipment, no salaries. The Nigerian government fails to provide proper services. The country’s doctors seek jobs...
ZAM’s investigative journalism partner, the African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC), once again made its presence felt at the yearly African Investigative Journalism Conference, held 29-31 October in Johannesburg. Firstly, keynote speaker Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Ghana’s famous undercover journalist, explained how African realities impact on the work of investigative journalists on the continent, where undercover reporting is often the only way to get close to authorities and their...
ZAM’s investigative journalism partner, the African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC), once again made its presence felt at the yearly African...
Olivia Ndubuisi infiltrated one of the notorious ‘419 scams’ industry’s headquarters. In this universe Nigerian young men use the internet to relieve unsuspecting ‘clients’ of their money in romance, gold, or business scams . The Yahoo Boy rarely lives alone. He needs his comrades around him to pull off a successful scam: the document forger, the international call router, the bank account frontperson and the tech wizard are needed just as much as the smooth talker. Luckily for the Yahoo Boy this...
Olivia Ndubuisi infiltrated one of the notorious ‘419 scams’ industry’s headquarters. In this universe Nigerian young men use the internet to relieve...
Exactly one week ago a hard-hitting investigation into the plunder of state resources by African oligarchs was launched at ZAM headquarters in Amsterdam. ZAM’s investigative editor Evelyn Groenink, who coordinated and edited the work, reported the findings to a crowd of about fifty people. Kenyan Africa Uncensored partner John-Allan Namu provided some of the highlights of the investigation via Skype. A representative from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended the event and joined the...
Exactly one week ago a hard-hitting investigation into the plunder of state resources by African oligarchs was launched at ZAM headquarters in Amsterdam....
How African oligarchs steal from their countries The Panama Papers revealed that numerous African politicians have stored wealth in off-shore accounts. But how did the money get there? A transnational team of reporters in seven African countries investigated looting by their rulers. Who we are The team that did the investigation Click here to download the full report by the African Investigative Publishing Collective in partnership with Africa Uncensored and ZAM. Montepuez, Mozambique The sandy...
How African oligarchs steal from their countries The Panama Papers revealed that numerous African politicians have stored wealth in off-shore accounts....
A transnational investigation by the African Investigative Publishing Collective The war for grazing lands in Africa Nomadic cattle farming in Africa is often imagined as picturesque and idyllic. In reality, present-day nomadic cattle herders in the East and West of the continent carry Pump Action, AK 47’s, and other machine guns. They trample farms, raze villages and displace communities in a desperate search for fading green pastures. Vigilante farming groups, also armed, are increasingly...
A transnational investigation by the African Investigative Publishing Collective The war for grazing lands in Africa Nomadic cattle farming in Africa is...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Uganda chapter Gulu Thursday February 16, 2017, 8 pm Outside Peyero bar on Gulu Municipality’s Langara road in north Uganda is a car which, by the last letter on its licence plate, belongs to State House, the official residence of the president. Upon inquiring I learn that both the bar and the car belong to Harriet Aber, the ‘social friend’ as she was called during...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Uganda chapter Gulu...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Cameroon chapter Bamenda, February 2017 “There were trees there,” says Patience Ndifor of the Society for Initiatives in Rural Development and Environmental Protection (SIRDEP) which receives funding from Germany, over the phone. “We planted them right there, in Nkwen, 2000 of them. To counter creeping desertification. But the farming women from the area came and...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Cameroon chapter...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Kenya chapter Nairobi, March 2017 They had come, way back in the year 2000, to promise Lucianna Wanjiku, 58, that her mud shack in Soweto settlement in Kibera, Nairobi, -often called ‘the greatest slum on earth- would be rehabilitated. She would get a title deed to the piece of land on which her single-room was built, the government men had said. She had forked out...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Kenya chapter...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Ivory Coast chapter “You won’t find anyone talking to you about these programmes,” says Amadi Sidiné, whose shop alongside the main road in Duékoué, among the street’s many vegetable stalls, sells everything from cans of tomatoes to light bulbs. “You can’t overcome this feeling of fear.” Duékoué is the main town in Ivory Coast’s war-damaged western region earmarked...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective Ivory Coast chapter...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective DRC chapter KATUBA LUBUMBASHI, April 2017 At 43, ‘Maman’ Kalunga, as her relatives call her, is worried about the education of her children of 6 and 12 years old. It is not easy to feed, clothe and educate kids when you are poor and live on the crossroads of 17 Street and Sakania Avenue in Katuba, Lubumbashi in Katanga province in the south of the Democratic Republic...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective DRC chapter KATUBA...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective “I won’t complain. They can kill my children with witchcraft.” Donor- funded development programmes in five extremely poor regions -of which two post-conflict- in Africa have benefited mainly the rich. An African Investigative Publishing Collective team that went on the ground in north Uganda (post Joseph Kony), Kinshasa in the DRC, Kibera township in Nairobi, western...
A transnational investigation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Kenya and the DRC by the African Investigative Publishing Collective “I won’t complain....
African investigative journalists and development aid workers from the West who work on the continent are strange bedfellows. Both groups feel sadness and outrage when they see Africans starve, work under inhuman conditions, or don’t have access to medicines when sick. Both often work together, for example in protest against polluting multinationals that evade tax, or pharmaceuticals that prioritise ‘western’ diseases in their research. Both want the best for suffering communities. But with being...
African investigative journalists and development aid workers from the West who work on the continent are strange bedfellows. Both groups feel sadness...
Several months ago ZAM published a nuanced report on the operations of ruby multinational Gemfields in Mozambique. Whilst highlighting forced removals of villagers and murders of artisanal miners by local police, the article took care to do justice to Gemfields. Ethical mining in a country ruled by a criminalised and ruthless regime was surely a challenge. To our surprise, instead of engaging on the issues, Gemfields has consistently attacked us and our reporters ever since. At times I have felt...
Several months ago ZAM published a nuanced report on the operations of ruby multinational Gemfields in Mozambique. Whilst highlighting forced removals of...
