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...
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....
