Economics

Africa's looted art | DW Documentary
Africa's looted art | DW Documentary Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi 19 Views • 5 years ago

Africa’s colonial overlords brutally stripped it of countless cultural treasures. Now, the fate of these items is being hotly debated in Europe and Africa as well. Some say the pieces should be returned, while others have reservations.European museums proudly present art and cultural artifacts from all over the world. But until recently, many of them have never considered their own complicity in the brutal ways in which the pieces were acquired. Only slowly are they starting to include the people to whose ancestors these artifacts once belonged in their decisions, although European colonial overlords pillaged and looted them in the first place.The issue of restitution is taking on a new urgency in Germany, last but not least because of the controversy surrounding Berlin's Humboldt Forum, which is home to non-European collections. It's estimated that more than 1.5 million artifacts from all around the world are held in storage at Germany's ethnological museums. The Linden Museum in Stuttgart alone holds 60 thousand pieces from Africa. How many of them were stolen? And how do museums address the fact that their colonialist collectors had blood on their hands? This documentary takes an African perspective on some examples, including valuable bronzes from Nigeria, an ornamental prow of a boat from Cameroon, and what is known as the Witbooi Bible from Namibia. What do the people in the African countries where the pieces originated think about all this? What are the views of researchers, museum directors, artists and curators? What emotions arise when the frequently painful past is stirred up and examined? And how significant is the issue in the context of problems such as poverty, hunger and corruption in former colonies?

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Oil promises – how oil changed a country | DW Documentary
Oil promises – how oil changed a country | DW Documentary Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi 43 Views • 5 years ago

When oil was discovered in Ghana in 2007, the country began to dream big. It dreamed that the ‘black gold’ would bring economic upswing and long-awaited prosperity to its nation. But what happens when dreams and globalization meet?The global economy continues to rely on oil — but the so-called ‘black gold’ is becoming scarce. If a country has oil, so we tend to believe, it has all it needs to become a wealthy country. When oil was discovered in Ghana in 2007, Ghanaians also believed that economic prosperity would soon sweep over their country. By 2010, drilling had started. Ghana was determined to do better than Nigeria, a country that exports oil, but has to import gasoline.This documentary, shot over a period of ten years, is a case study of globalization. Filmed in a coastal region where people lived off fishing and rubber cultivation for decades, it shows the impact the oil discovery has had on their lives. Would the promises come true? Would the ‘black gold’ bring modern life and progress, paved streets, electricity and jobs even to small villages? Filmmaker Elke Sasse and journalist Andrea Stäritz spent ten years documenting the developments on Ghana’s western coast. Nigerian animator Ebele Okoye adds her personal perspective through art, as a citizen of a nation hit by the oil curse.

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Stealing Africa⎜WHY POVERTY?⎜(Documentary)
Stealing Africa⎜WHY POVERTY?⎜(Documentary) Ọbádélé Kambon 67 Views • 5 years ago

Rüschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large bounty tax revenue for the Zambians. Zambia has the 3rd largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80% are unemployed. Based on original research into public documents, STEALING AFRICA is an investigative story of global trade and political corruption where money and natural resources only flow one way, and in the meantime poverty becomes harder to escape.

Filmmaker: Christoffer Guldbrandsen
Producer: Henrik Veileborg
Produced by Guld­brandsen Film
Released: 2012

This film was originally released as part of THE WHY series WHY POVERTY?. Learn more about the project:
https://www.thewhy.dk/projects/why-poverty
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