 Living
with Corruption
(Dispatches: How to Get Ahead in Africa)
Buy on DVD: £20 (inclusive of VAT and
P&P)
BAFTA Award-winning journalist Sorious Samura shows how in Africa
corruption has become normal and accepted, even though it's tearing the
continent to pieces. Despite the billions in western aid poured in,
Samura claims Africa is heading into oblivion: but it's not war, famine
and disease strangling development; it's corruption.
This programme provides a sober portrait of how modern Africa really
works, where the voiceless millions, living in poverty, have had their
futures stolen by their corrupt governments, aided and abetted by the
West. Samura moves into one of the largest slums in Africa, Kibera in
Kenya, to reveal the relentlessness of everyday corruption, where the
poor have to bribe just to survive: for hospital appointments, building
shacks, getting work and staying out of jail. Western development aid
pours into this environment. No one knows how much Western development
aid money becomes corrupted but it doesn't seem to matter because it
still comes anyway.
Samura returns home to Sierra Leone to live with Mama Queen and her 10
children. Here widespread corruption led to a brutal and bloody civil
war that ended in 2002. The country had the chance to start again but
Samura reveals how a seven-year aid project, led by the British, has
failed because of corruption and a lack of understanding from Western
donors. There is no water or electricity and Sierra Leoneans still have
the worst life expectancy on the planet. Mama Queen's nine-year-old son
has to bribe his teaches just to be taught. Samura claims that, in many
parts of Africa, school is a place where children are taught to bribe
and to use power and status to get what they want.
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