Zanzibar, a Melting pot of culture, Art and Religion Zanzibar is an island on the east coast of Africa. Zanzibar is renown for its warm hospitable people, its rich spices and the rich history as a trading port. This documentary aims to reveal the secret to cultural diversity and co-existence through the lens of an Omani Plantation owner, a painter, a Taarab singer.

In Part two of this documentary the story of courage and persistence continues. Fatima Adam, one of the chibok girls abductees soldiers on past the trauma she under went at the hands of the boko haram.Bukky Shonibare fights on to have the rest of the chibok girls released. A story of courage and resilience.

The multiplicity of foreign interests in African mineral wealth and resources has resulted in increased military bases on African soil and the threat of a reemergence of cold wars, civil wars the millions of people displaced of on the continent. How can this be avoided?

⁣African Change-Makers: Godfrey Nzamujo - Songhai Centre

From our archives - here's a Newsnight special in 1980 just after Robert Mugabe's victory.

Regreening the planet looks at the profit that comes from the recovery of ecosystems in Spain, Egypt and India. Restoring ecosystems does not only generate ecological profit but also economic. In Regreening the desert, the makers of VPRO Backlight showed that the greening of deserts is very well possible. They followed the American-Chinese cameraman and ecologist John D. Liu.He filmed how an inhospitable dry mountain area as large as the Netherlands was transformed into a lush green oasis. The greening caused not only ecological recovery but also economic growth of the region. Since then, John D. Liu has traveled the world to inspire people in other countries to follow this example.Dutch ecologist Willem Ferwerda was inspired by Liu and decided to work together with him.

This cooperation has grown into a new organization, Commonland, a foundation with a clear mission: to restore the ecosystems on a large scale worldwide. The point of departure is that restoring landscapes not only yields ecological profits but also money, work and hope for the people living there.We can see that this works in Egypt: in 1977 Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish SEKEM, experimented to green the desert at Cairo. In 2014, SEKEM has grown to be the leading supplier of ecological products in Egypt and far beyond. Dr. Abouleish has built not only a flourishing business in the desert but a complete community with schools and their own medical and cultural facilities.

A better proof that greening and social innovation go hand in hand is almost impossible to find.That all areas can grow alive, even if they are completely eroded by erosion, also appears from the special story of Indian Jadav "Molai" Payeng. When he was 17, he worked for a replanting project in Assam province. After the project was completed and the other laborers had disappeared, he decided to continue propagating wood by hand. Now, Molai forest is 300 acres and populated by elephants, Bengal tigers, deer, rhino and numerous birds. Payeng is also called The Forest Man in India because he has been able to create a jungle singlehandedly.That is something that Spain might well use. Large areas in Spain are dry and abandoned due to misused agricultural subsidies, unintentional water and land use and large-scale erosion.

The population is turning its back on the countryside and moves to the cities, but there is also unemployment there. In Ayoo de Vidriales, a graying village in the middle of Spain, agricultural engineer Pedro Alonso Fernandez has begun to recover land. He wants to show that the Spanish silted and eroded soils are in fact Green Gold.Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.

© VPRO Backlight Octobre 2014On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series.VPRO Documentary publishes one new subtitled documentary about current affairs, finance, sustainability, climate change or politics every week. We research subjects like politics, world economy, society and science with experts and try to grasp the essence of prominent trends and developments.

Credits:Directed by: Rob van Hattum & Gijs Meyer SwanteeProduction: Helen Goossens Senior editors: Henneke Hagen & Frank WieringEnglish, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson.French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.

Made by leading Ugandan documentarist Nathan Ochole, this film explains what agroforestry is and the myriad of contributions that it has made to Uganda. It starts in the highlands of Kabale, where trees on farms prevented landslides and floods, provided fruit to villagers and made their agriculture more sustainable. It then roams to the parklands of northern Uganda where Borassus palms and Shea trees provide valuable nutrition and cash earnings (particularly for women in the case of Shea) and improve the yields of the crops grown near them. It visits Kapchorwa where we see the use of the nitrogen-fixing shrub Calliandra as feed for dairy cows and then documents the improvements that orange trees have made to livelihoods in Namatumba.

Along the way, the film interviews farmers as well as Dr Clement Okia, the representative of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Uganda, and Dr Hilary Agaba, Programme Leader Agroforestry at Uganda’s National Forestry Resources Research Institute (NaFORRI NARO). It was produced by Cathy Watson, formerly of Tree Talk and Muvle Trust in Uganda and now Head of Programme Development at ICRAF, and by Australian AVID volunteer, Laura Keenan.

⁣Pro. Houyeleet Thiam talks with another fellow Mauritanian who is fighting the fight from afar. [2018]

Usman Mohamadu walked over 300 miles in 10 days to sell his cattle for a fortune in a country very fond of red meat. The second part of our special report on Fulani nomads

While all deserts, including the Sahara, increase in size during the dry season and decrease during the wet season, human-caused climate change in conjunction with natural climate cycles, are causing the Sahara desert to grow more and shrink less. Since 1920, the Sahara has grown beyond its initial boundaries and gobbled up more space, growing by nearly 10 percent. The desert is advancing south into more tropical terrain, turning green vegetation dry and soil once used for farming into the barren ground. Despite the Global North being the most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it is people like those living in the Sahel who are paying the price.

Ten African countries are moving ahead with an ambitious pan-African effort to protect arable land from the encroaching Sahara —by planting trees from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. Dubbed The Great Green Wall, it is an African-led movement with an ambition to grow an 8,000km NEWEST WONDER OF THE WORLD across the entire width of Africa, designed to trap the sands of the Sahara, halt the advance of the desert and restore 100 million hectares of land. It was initially intended to be just a line of trees, stretching east to west, to help push back the Sahara’s expansion down south.