On 28 November 2020 an attack by Boko Haram claimed the lives of 110 rice farmers near Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in northern Nigeria. According to AFP News , the farmers were attacked for passing information about Boko Haram to the military. Boko Haram has launched ongoing military operations since 2009 with the aim of establishing an Islamic State, creating a dire humanitarian crisis in northern Nigeria. But despite the efforts of the Nigerian military, Boko Haram and the Islamic...
On 28 November 2020 an attack by Boko Haram claimed the lives of 110 rice farmers near Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in northern Nigeria....
Call for stories In the Kleptocracy Project part I, ZAM and its partner network of African investigative journalists delved into the international associates of Africa’s kleptocrats and into the failing state structures that are connected to kleptocratic practices. In Part II, we want to dissect the kleptocracies themselves. Corruption is the system, as they say, but what systems, exactly, are these? How do they work? How is it possible that scandal after scandal, exposure after exposure, continue...
Call for stories In the Kleptocracy Project part I, ZAM and its partner network of African investigative journalists delved into the international...
Luzia and the men Kleptocracy and lack of hope are only some of the reasons Angolan citizens leave the country. For Luzia Banzuzi (41) it was two men: both her first husband, who kept stalking and threatening her for having left him; and the second, who kicked her out of her house because he believed she was still ‘seeing’ the first one. Homeless and threatened, in a country where police nor justice system will help or protect, she saw only one way out. She went to Cuba — the country’s socialist...
Luzia and the men Kleptocracy and lack of hope are only some of the reasons Angolan citizens leave the country. For Luzia Banzuzi (41) it was two men:...
Portland’s welcome In June last year the town of Portland in Maine, north west USA, was suddenly in the news because thirty-nine migrants from Angola and the DRC had showed up at migrant reception centres there. While awaiting their asylum hearings they had come here because they had heard that the town counts important Angolan and Congolese communities, based there for over three decades. They had also heard of the ‘open arm policy’ of the city. In the words of Mayor Ethan Strimling, ‘the state of...
Portland’s welcome In June last year the town of Portland in Maine, north west USA, was suddenly in the news because thirty-nine migrants from Angola and...
Ana's journey from nothing to nowhere On 18 April, for fear of creating hotbeds of COVID 19 contagion, a Mexico City judge ordered the release of migrants from sixty-five overcrowded immigration centres in the country. By the end of that month, with both the northern and southern border lines under lockdown, the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) estimated that over twenty thousand migrants were now stranded around border lines; under the lockdown, even appointments to identify refugees are...
Ana's journey from nothing to nowhere On 18 April, for fear of creating hotbeds of COVID 19 contagion, a Mexico City judge ordered the release of...
Who are the associates who help kleptocrat rulers on the African continent to exploit their countries? Are African leaders simply weak and bribe-able, or more complicit in the massive theft of state resources than that? How come assumed poor countries waste billions? 26 members of the African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC). 17 countries. 4 devastating reports. A collaboration between AIPC and ZAM Magazine Downloads The Plunder Route to Panama The Last Resource. Risking Death to Feed...
Who are the associates who help kleptocrat rulers on the African continent to exploit their countries? Are African leaders simply weak and bribe-able, or...
Millions spent on expensive medical equipment couldn’t save this life. Much dismay and outrage has followed the release of Africa Uncensored’s documentary Saving Esther, about the shady purchase, for hundreds of millions of dollars, of medical machines. The purchase of the machines, from X-rays to kidney dialysis equipment, has done little to improve health care for citizens in need of basic and middle-level treatment, but did deliver lucrative secondary contracts to the politically connected. The...
Millions spent on expensive medical equipment couldn’t save this life. Much dismay and outrage has followed the release of Africa Uncensored’s...
African investigative journalists met with international colleagues at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last week. Joy Kiriga, who contributed to the transnational investigations on Public Disservice – a collaboration between the African Investigative Publishing Collective, ZAM and Africa Uncensored, spoke at the conference. She was warmly introduced on the GIJC website as follows: “Joy Kirigia is a reporter, currently working with Africa Uncensored, an independent media house based...
African investigative journalists met with international colleagues at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last week. Joy Kiriga, who...
The African Investigative Publishing Collective and ZAM will present their groundbreaking reports on kleptocracy at an international journalists’ gathering in Hamburg in September. Investigations by a total of 24 African investigative journalists in collaboration with ZAM produced 4 groundbreaking reports since October 2017. The outcomes were reported by media worldwide. Newspapers and magazines, in print and online, in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, DRC, Mali, Liberia,...
The African Investigative Publishing Collective and ZAM will present their groundbreaking reports on kleptocracy at an international journalists’...
The Ghanaian government thought that processing tomatoes into paste would help its starving and desperate farmers. So canning factories kept being festively opened. Only they never worked. How harvests go to waste next to idle canning factories. “There was this pesticide; it was called Aerocon. Reddish in colour. Two of them drank it and they died because they had borrowed a huge amount from money lenders. It is true. I witnessed it”. Collins Offiman Takyi, municipal chief executive officer for...
The Ghanaian government thought that processing tomatoes into paste would help its starving and desperate farmers. So canning factories kept being...
How millions meant for the sick are never spent. Health care in Nigeria is incredibly complicated. Large budgets are trapped on differ ent government levels, only accessible to those who know how to work the system. A minister wants to change that -but is he still the minister? The Primary Healthcare Centre in Ugbamaka-Igah village in Kogi State, Nigeria, is overgrown with grasses. The labour and patient wards as well as the other rooms of the clinic are covered with dust and cobwebs and the lab is...
How millions meant for the sick are never spent. Health care in Nigeria is incredibly complicated. Large budgets are trapped on differ ent government...
As the president ages, a kleptocracy disintegrates Cameroon was used to ruling party ‘godfathers’ mismanaging and fleecing state projects. But now that the country’s leader is 86 years old, a struggle for succession may bring improvement in governance. Or it may make things worse. There is no road connecting the Obang villages in Manyu in South West Cameroon to any market town – a sad state of affairs, considering that farmers need a road to be able to bring their produce to consumers. It is not...
As the president ages, a kleptocracy disintegrates Cameroon was used to ruling party ‘godfathers’ mismanaging and fleecing state projects. But now that...
The mysterious contracts that emptied the health budget and left patients in the cold. Using hundreds of millions of dollars to buy new medical equipment for the country’s main hospitals was presented as a good idea. It wasn’t. But those who objected were arm-twisted and run over in a process driven by ‘coercive vendors.’ On a sidewalk next to the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi stands a weeping woman. She is holding another smaller, woman who is also crying and appears to be struggling to...
The mysterious contracts that emptied the health budget and left patients in the cold. Using hundreds of millions of dollars to buy new medical equipment...
Lack of state services and protection encourages despair and militancy The reason why Somali soldier Ali (20) is seriously thinking about joining the ‘terrorists’ of Al-Shabab who are waging a violent insurgency in his country, often with terrorist methods, is that he doesn’t get a salary from his government. He hasn’t had for months. “We don’t even get weapons. The government is not committed to us in this war. It would be easier for me to be with the ‘boys,’” -common jargon for Al-Shabab, ed.-,...
Lack of state services and protection encourages despair and militancy The reason why Somali soldier Ali (20) is seriously thinking about joining the...
“Your dream home coming soon,” say big bill boards and newspaper adverts in Lusaka. Pictures of brilliantly white large mansions surrounded by majestic trees illustrate how the happy few will enjoy residing in the new suburb-under-construction, Kingsland City, in beautiful Lusaka forest. The housing estate, in the middle of what was once a nature reserve called Forest No. 27, will be equipped with every hearts’ desire, from a shopping mall to a sports complex, a “world class” university, a golf...
“Your dream home coming soon,” say big bill boards and newspaper adverts in Lusaka. Pictures of brilliantly white large mansions surrounded by majestic...
A network of Mozambican ruling party leaders and Chinese businesses already notorious for large scale timber looting and deforestation, has moved from plundering Mozambican timber to fish, another natural resource in the country with its long coastline. The Mozambican-Chinese network is taking fish mainly from the northern Mozambican province Cabo Delgado and Ilha de Moçambique on the coast off Nampula province. Whilst on the ground a customs official helps to pack live lobsters for export and a...
A network of Mozambican ruling party leaders and Chinese businesses already notorious for large scale timber looting and deforestation, has moved from...
“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...
