News & Politics
Film by Sorious Samura and Clive Patterson
How political corruption is turning the country's spiralling youth unemployment into a threat to society.
You can witness the same scene at dawn every morning in Kenya's capital, Nairobi: thousands of young people in search of work are streaming out from the city's slums towards its industrial areas.
Most of them are neatly if simply dressed, many of them are full of optimism, but the vast majority are destined to be disappointed. Those that can afford it will try and cram onto a bus in an attempt to beat the crowds, the rest will weave their way on foot through the heavy morning commuter traffic. But when they arrive, the situation for all of them will invariably be the same as it was on the previous day and the day before that and on all the other preceding days.
They will spend an hour or so packed in their hundreds along the pavements and parking lots outside a factory, warehouse or office block, certificates of education and references from previous employers ready to hand, waiting patiently for something to happen.
The usual rumours pass from person to person, this company is said to need people with computer skills, that one needs fork lift truck drivers or perhaps some just some day laborers. But then a supervisor will step from the building and shout out that he can offer a day's work for four people with experience of working a lathe or two with secretarial skills.
Many step forward, a lucky few are selected at random and make their way inside, then the doors of the building close and the rest drift off to take up station at the next place or to make their long way back home - hopes dashed yet again.
A national disaster in the making?
George, a Kenyan in his early twenties, has graduated from university in December 2012 with a diploma in electrical engineering but so far he has been unable to find work.
"The chance I'm going to be chosen today is limited," he says. "I'm just gambling. You can stand here for as long as half a day, because you never know the time that you can be picked."
It is a story that is all too common. Joblessness among all people of working age is a serious problem in Kenya, but among young people, it is a catastrophe. The country has one of the largest youth populations in Africa, but roughly 70 percent of its working age youth - almost 10 million people - are unemployed, although a surprising number are very well educated and possess the kinds of skills a healthy economy really should be able to put to use.
In a country where almost 80 percent of the population is under the age of 35 some have labelled it a national disaster in the making, that may have serious social consequences and lead to civil unrest.
For a country that is still recovering from the scars of the widespread community violence that followed the 2007 election and which is still reeling from the aftermath of the al-Shabab Westgate mall terrorist attack in September 2013, it is a hint worth taking seriously.
Dr Alex Ezeh of the African Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi put the significance of this youth population 'bulge' in context.
"It is a demographic event," he says. "It's something that many countries go through at different stages as they move from very high fertility and mortality to very low mortality, it creates this reservoir of people." But this, as he explained, can have positive and negative consequences.
"Generally, what makes it a good thing is our ability to harness the economic potential of such a large proportion of young people going into the labour market … There is a side of it, the more negative part of it, which is, if there are no jobs and no opportunities to engage, then you have a lot of young people understanding what is going on but they're disenfranchised politically, economically, and in many other ways, and this creates a lot of political instability."
The stark reality for the young people from the huge slums at Kibera and Mathare and elsewhere around Kenya's capital is that life without a job is extremely difficult. With no regular income many of them have to turn to crime to make a living. And even if they do not, they are often suspected of involvement in crime, which in turn leads to deadly entanglements with Kenya's notoriously trigger-happy police.
A generation pushed to the edge
When asked who should be doing what about Kenya's youth unemployment, the answer is clear. Successive governments in Kenya have done little to alleviate the plight of the jobless and should be doing more.
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Can Somalia's embattled president unite his country against the armed group al-Shabab?
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Film by Nidhi Dutt and Daniel Boaden
People & Power investigates the environmental consequences of palm oil plantations in equatorial Africa.
There are few products so ubiquitous as palm oil. You can find its derivatives in chocolate, shampoo, toothpaste, detergent, ice cream, floor polish and a host of other products filling supermarket shelves.
Extracted from the fruit of the tropically-grown oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis), it has become so versatile and sought after that the growing economies of Indonesia and Malaysia, the world's two largest producers, make some $40bn a year from its production and export.
Given that by 2020 global demand for palm oil is expected to double and then triple by 2050, it is no wonder that other developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan West Africa where the tree originates, have been looking enviously at Southeast Asia and hoping to emulate that success.
But palm oil cultivation does not come cost-free. If not done sustainably, say conservationists, it can have disastrous consequences for people and the environment. In Indonesia, for example, it has played a major role in deforestation which has seen the loss of more than 6 million hectares of primary forest over the last 15 years.
As rainforests are home to least half of this planet's species of plants, animals and insects, the negative impact on global biodiversity can only be imagined. In addition, indigenous communities are also destroyed as people who have lived happily off the forest's resources for generations, often do not own the land (at least not in a form recognised by governments, corporations and their lawyers) and are frequently displaced to make way for new plantations.
Boosting Cameroon's economy
It is against this background that the Central and West African state of Cameroon has been trying to get a palm oil industry off - or rather into - the ground. Its President Paul Biya, who has held office since 1982, has been looking for ways to give Cameroon's economy a boost.
His country is not as poverty-stricken as some on the continent. It has some modest oil resources and favourable conditions for agriculture and is comparatively stable politically, but it is not immune from many of the problems associated with developing nations, from chronically high unemployment and an inequitable distribution of income to corruption and inadequate public infrastructure.
Cameroon is also over-reliant on imports, which makes it susceptible to rising prices and food insecurity. According to the UN, more than 40 percent of the population are living under the poverty line, while over one-third of its children are suffering from chronic malnutrition.
Palm oil then, would seem to offer good prospects for additional growth. The tree is native to the region and the climate is perfect for its cultivation. And of course, there are plenty of international agribusiness conglomerates looking for suitable places in West Africa in which to replicate the stellar profits enjoyed by the industry in Asia.
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We investigate allegations that despite its new democratic institutions, police torture continues in Tunisia.
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Last December, an Al Jazeera network investigation examined shocking claims that the government of Kenya has been running secret police death squads, tasked with assassinating suspected terrorists and criminals. At the time the Kenyan government strongly refuted the allegations but reports and rumours in Kenya about extra-judicial killings have continued to proliferate.
Ten months on, People and Power asked Mohammed Ali, one of Kenya’s top independent investigative journalists, to find out why.
In this deeply worrying film, Ali discovers that mysterious killings are indeed continuing amid a culture of apparent impunity, leaving Kenyan security forces open to suspicions that they are unaccountable and seemingly out of control.
He discovers that over 1,500 Kenyan citizens have been killed by the police since 2009, and that statistically, Kenyans are currently five times more likely to be shot by a policeman than a criminal.
With often little or no investigation by the Kenyan state into the circumstances surrounding these deaths, he finds evidence to suggest that an increasing number of Kenyan police officers may be complicit in what have been described as summary executions of suspects.
Even the Kenyan army, seen by most Kenyans as less corrupt and more trustworthy than the police, is now allegedly implicated in the torture and forced disappearance of terror suspects in the country’s northeastern region.
This film contains graphic images of violence and its aftermath that some viewers may find disturbing.
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Just a few decades ago, Ethiopia was a country defined by its famines, particularly between 1983-1985 when in excess of half a million people starved to death as a consequence of drought, crop failure and a brutal civil war.
Against this backdrop, in recent years, Ethiopia has been experiencing stellar economic growth. The headline statistics are certainly remarkable: the country is creating millionaires faster than any other in Africa; output from farming, Ethiopia’s dominant industry, has tripled in a decade; the capital Addis Ababa is experiencing a massive construction boom; and the last six years have seen the nation’s GDP grow by a staggering 108 percent.
But it is not all positive news.
Around 90 percent of the population of 87 million still suffers from numerous deprivations, ranging from insufficient access to education to inadequate health care; average incomes are still well below $1500 a year; and more than 30 million people still face chronic food shortages.
Many critics say that the growth seen in agriculture, which accounts for almost half of Ethiopia’s economic activity and a great deal of its recent success, is actually being driven by an out of control ‘land grab', as multinational companies and private speculators vie to lease millions of acres of the country’s most fertile territory from the government at bargain basement prices.
At the ministry of agriculture in Addis Ababa, this land-lease programme is often described as a "win-win" because it brings in new technologies and employment and, supposedly, makes it easier to improve health care, education and other services in rural areas.
"Ethiopia needs to develop to fight poverty, increase food supplies and improve livelihoods and is doing so in a sustainable way," said one official.
But according to a host of NGO’s and policy advocates, including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and the Oakland Institute, the true consequences of the land grabs are almost all negative. They say that in order to make such huge areas available for foreign investors to grow foodstuffs and bio-fuels for export - and in direct contravention of Ethiopia’s obligations under international law - the authorities are displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples, abusing their human rights, destroying their traditions, trashing the environment, and making them more dependent on food aid than ever before.
The most controversial element of the government’s programme is known as 'villagisation' - the displacement of people from land they have occupied for generations and their subsequent resettlement in artificial communities.
In Gambella, where two ethnic groups, the Anuaks and the Nuers, predominate, it has meant tens of thousands of people have been forced to abandon a traditional way of life. One such is Moot, an Anuak farmer who now lives in a government village far from his home.
Despite growing internal opposition and international criticism, the Ethiopian government shows no sign of scaling the programme back. According to the Oakland Institute, since 2008, an area the size of France has already been handed over to foreign corporations. Over the next few years an area twice that size is thought to be earmarked for leasing to investors.
So what does all this mean for the people on the ground? In Ethiopia – Land for Sale, filmmakers Veronique Mauduy and Romain Pelleray try and find out.
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To much of the world, Somalia has a fearsome reputation. It is seen as one of the most dangerous places on the planet - a failed state that is widely believed to be home to warlords, pirates and terrorists.
But in the north of the country, at least, the reality is different.
Somaliland is an autonomous enclave with its own flourishing capital city, Hargeisa. Though a long way off from receiving international recognition as an independent state, it is a haven of peace and stability when compared with the rest of Somalia.
But Somaliland has its dark side. Within living memory its citizens fell victim to the most savage of state-sponsored atrocities. General Siad Barre - the ruthless dictator who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991 - went to war with the clans who inhabited the area. Believing them to be supporting a rebellion against his regime, he took revenge by sending in his army with a mandate to "kill all but the crows".
The city of Hargeisa was virtually destroyed during intense and pitiless bombardment. Many thousands of people were killed or driven into exile. Barre's soldiers, meanwhile, tortured and murdered as many as 50,000 others - most of them civilians - and buried their bodies in mass graves. Now, as those who still live in this region try to secure their future, some feel those past agonies should be re-examined and those responsible held to account.
In this exclusive two-part investigation, People and Power meets a community coming to terms with the horrors of the past and joins forces with a group of forensic investigators and human rights activists attempting to bring an alleged war criminal, Yusuf Abdi Ali, also known as Colonel Tukeh, to account.
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