The Frontline Club will be hosting a series of screenings for the launch of a new virtual reality news documentary from the BBC. With headsets provided, we will be screening the immersive documentary followed by a Q&A with BBC Africa’s correspondent Alastair Leithead, executive producer and head of BBC’s VR Hub Zillah Watson and digital development director for BBC News James Montgomery on the potential this new technology holds for the future of news reporting.

DAMMING THE NILE

The Nile is the world’s longest river, and it’s where the world’s first war over water could be fought. For millennia Egypt has been the river’s great superpower, but now an ambitious and emerging Ethiopia has dammed the Blue Nile – where most of its water comes from. “Damming the Nile” is a virtual reality documentary series from BBC News, taking viewers on a deeply immersive journey down the Nile from its source to the sea through Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. On assignment with the BBC’s Africa correspondent and his team, you’ll explore the geopolitical struggles for regional power and influence along the Nile and investigate how these nations are navigating these choppy waters. Enjoy the ride.

Time Slots:

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM

11 AM – 12 PM 

16:30 – 5:30 PM

Please email events@www.beta.frontlineclub.com to reserve your place specifying what time you will be attending.

After over two decades in power, Mr Jammeh was defeated in December’s election by Adama Barrow but went on to challenge the results. The former president stepped down peacefully after West African troops had been sent to Gambia in support of Mr Barrow, with the threat of military action from regional states looming.

The transfer of power in The Gambia has been celebrated as a democratic coup, with many urging other leaders across the continent– including those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Zimbabwe – to follow the “Gambian example” rather than clinging on to power after their constitutional term limits expire. Was it an exception, or proof that African leaders are increasingly willing to demand — and enforce — democracy in the region?

Chaired by James Copnall, Africa Editor for the BBC World Service. He was previously the BBC correspondent for Ivory Coast (2004-7), Morocco (2008-9) and Sudan and South Sudan (2009-12). He is the author of A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts, a book about Sudan and South Sudan after the 2011 separation.

Jerome Starkey was The Times‘ Africa correspondent for five years from 2012 until he was deported from Kenya last year. His last assignment was in Gambia to cover the military showdown when President Yayha Jammeh refused to step down. Before that he lived in Afghanistan, from 2006-2012, initially as a freelancer and later as a stringer for The Times. He was appointed countryside correspondent in February.

Ludovica Iaccino is an international news reporter at IBTimes UK covering foreign affairs and news in regions such as Africa and the Middle East. She has previously reported from Malawi, Rwanda, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Lebanon. Ludovica is the author of The Silence of Nyamata, a historical novel on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A photojournalist, she also collaborates with the websites IecoAfrica and Words in the Bucket

Murtala Touray is a Gambian with over two decades of experience working across West Africa with public, NGO and private entities including the regional body, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria. Murtala holds a Master’s degree in African Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Bradford and provides advisory service on political, social and security risks facing business and humanitarian operations in West Africa.

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy at Birmingham University. He was the joint editor of African Affairs, the #1 journal in Area Studies, for four years and is one of the editors of The African Affairs Reader (OUP, 2017) along with Lindsay Whitfield and Carl Death. Professor Cheeseman’s research interests focus on African politics and democratization, especially elections, political parties and forms of political mobilization. He is the author of a monograph, Democracy in Africa: Successes, failures and the struggle for political reform (CUP, 2015) and more than 30 book chapters and journal articles. Nic also writes a regular column for Kenya’s Sunday Nation newspaper, is the founding editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics (OUP), and a writer for, and advisor to, Kofi Annan’s African Progress Panel.

Harriet Agerholm sat down with The Guardian‘s migration correspondent and author Patrick Kingsley to discuss his latest book, The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.

Filmed and edited by Adam Barr.

The Pearl of Africa tells the story of Cleopatra Kambugu, a 28 year old Ugandan transgender woman. Born biologically male, she is transitioning into the woman she knows she was born to be, in one of the most transphobic places in the world. Forced to leave her country and loving boyfriend behind, she sets out to fight for her right to love, and against all odds, to become the first accepted trans person in Uganda.

From her warm demeanour and disarming smile, you wouldn’t know how dangerous life is for Cleopatra Kambugu. After being outed on the front page of the biggest tabloid in Kampala, in a country with some of the world’s most bigoted anti-LGBT laws (including a notorious bill threatening life imprisonment for homosexuality), her relationship with long-term boyfriend Nelson is tested. Forced to flee to Kenya to escape reprisals, Cleo begins the process of navigating a difficult bureaucracy to reconcile with her partner.

The Pearl of Africa follows its main character as she seeks to shine light on the intricate concepts of gender and identity, bringing viewers into a Ugandan community whose existence has been shrouded in myth and prejudice. A moving and universal love story captured in the face of extreme circumstances, this unforgettable documentary urgently reveals the consequences of Uganda’s anti-LGBT laws.

Directed and produced by: Jonny von Wallström
Country: Sweden
Year: 2016
Runtime: 90′
www.roughstudios.com

We are delighted to welcome Anglo-Italian author and reporter Michela Wrong to present her debut novel, Borderlines. Wrong has been writing non-fiction about African politics for two decades. As a Reuters correspondent first based in the Cote d’Ivoire and former Zaire, she covered the turbulent events of the mid 1990s, including the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda’s post-genocide period. Wrong then moved to Kenya, where she became Africa correspondent for the Financial Times.

In her debut novel, she probes the motives underlying Western engagement with the continent, questioning the value of universal justice and exploring how history itself is forged.

“Borderlines is a novel about relationships, the mysteries they contain, and the ways in which – when they go wrong and leave scars borne across generations – it is often for the most prosaic, petty reasons. This is as true of the relationships between people in the novel as it is for those between governments and their citizens, between nations.” – FT Kola for the Guardian

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu is £25 per person excluding drinks.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

On 3 November at the Frontline Club, photojournalist Greg Constantine spoke to UNHCR’s UK representative Gonzalo Vargas Llosa about Nowhere People, Constantine’s body of ten years of photographic work on the world’s estimated 10m stateless people.

A stateless person “under law is considered no citizen of any country,” said Constantine. “Once citizenship is severed, it opens people up to an array of deprivation of rights.”

The number of global stateless may exceed 10m, according to Vargas Llosa, as “very few governments want to give exact statistics on stateless people inside their borders.”

Constantine’s talk at the Frontline Club comes on the first anniversary of the launch of I Belong, a UN campaign to “end the scourge of statelessness by 2024,” said Vargas Llosa.

Constantine showed images from his meetings with stateless peoples, including the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Malaysia; Nubians in Kenya; Filipinos in Saba, Malaysia; the Dali in Nepal; the Dom in Iraq; ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic; and Roma in Italy.

“Roma fell through huge legal gaps where citizenship was not extended to them” after end of Yugoslavia says @grconstantine @frontlineclub

— Charlotte Beale (@CharlotteAGB) November 3, 2015

Constantine also shared quotes from stateless men and women he had met, including from Jafar, a stateless Rohingya in Bangladesh: “Because we don’t have citizenship, we are like a fish out of water, flapping and unable to breathe. When a fish is out of water, he suffocates.”

“The legacy of colonialism is very much a part of people becoming stateless in Asia and Africa,” said Constantine. “The creation of the idea of ‘others’ that came from French colonialism is responsible for the Ivory Coast’s stateless people… Denial of citizenship is directly attached to Ivorian conflict and the 2002 civil war was borne from a clash of identity – us and them.”

He added: “Most times, you find stateless people are not refugees. Most have never left the country in which they were born.”

“The Rohingya is by far the most extreme example of statelessness in the world today,” Constantine continued, despite them playing a huge role in the economy of southern Bangladesh.

“40,000 Rohingya are living segregated lives in Internationally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps [in Burma],” said Constantine. They are put up in “tents… that psychologically make them think their situation as IDPs is temporary… The conflict has been manufactured by Burmese central government, by 40 years of oppressive policies that pitted communities against each other.”

“The administrative tactics states use to humiliate their stateless fly under the radar of the world’s media,” said Constantine. Discrimination against ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic has been “manifested into policy.”

Vargas Llosa added that in the Dominican Republic, “statelessness is the result of deliberate, well-planned, well-executed policies” by the government.

While “huge strides” have been made in Iraq, which has “some of the most progressive laws in the Middle East,” Domari gypsies still suffer. Similarly, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, “Roma fell through huge legal gaps where citizenship was not extended to them.” Because of certain laws, generations of Roma in Italy “are not afforded opportunities to become citizens,” Constantine said.

“Gender discriminating nationality laws are all over the Middle East and Africa,” added Constantine. He highlighted this with a comment on the situation in Lebanon – a young subject born to a Lebanese mother and a stateless father must inherit her father’s stateless condition. 27 countries globally limit a mother’s ability to pass her nationality onto her family.

A member of the audience pointed out that “the state is often an enemy of the people it is supposed to be administering,” and asked Constantine and Vargas Llosa their opinion of the role of the state in creating statelessness crises.

“What strikes one from Greg’s images is the evil a state can do,” Vargas Llosa agreed. “What happens when the caregiver of human rights ends up being the vehicle which perpetrates the denial of those rights?”

Constantine deplored the “sovereign right of a state to determine who its citizens are and who they aren’t.”

Visit the Nowhere People website to find out more.

He’s a household name in Ghana, but few have seen his face. Investigative journalist Anas Aremewaw Anas is on a mission to ferret out corruption in every corner of his country. Wearing an array of disguises, he regularly goes deep undercover to trap suspected criminals – splashing their faces across newspapers and handing them over to delighted police.

Despite his notoriety, Anas’ methods attract criticism from other journalists, who believe his investigations go too far in luring and catching suspected criminals to achieve sensationalist stories.

Director Ryan Mullins follows Anas during a chaotic, adrenaline-filled period which sees him revelling in fulfilling his three-pronged approach: naming, shaming and jailing. Whilst some journalists look on in dismay at his tactics, Anas enjoys being worshipped by the people, and is welcomed back to his old elementary school like a rock star. But as he begins his next big case – the exposure of a church he suspects is guilty of human trafficking – the lines begin to blur, as we witness the human fallout of his actions.

Director: Ryan Mullins
Producers: Bob Moore, Mila Aung-Thwin
Running time: 90′
Year: 2014
Country: Canada
Distributor: Dogwoof

On Wednesday 24 May, an audience gathered at the Frontline Club for a discussion on corruption and its far-reaching implications. Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis joined freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, Owen Bennett-Jones, to talk about their experiences in Africa, Afghanistan and beyond. Chayes is an expert on kleptocracy, anti-corruption and civil-military relations, and is currently senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times and has worked extensively in Africa.

L-r: Sarah Chayes, Owen Bennett-Jones and Tom Burgis

It has become increasingly clear that corruption exists at every level around the world. Yet there is an ongoing reluctance to understand its complexities and to commit to workable solutions.

Chayes said, “I think there is a bias against this topic … People’s eyes glaze over. It’s not a sexy topic. There is a tendency to dismiss the seriousness of the problem.”

Chayes did not study corruption in depth until she spent time in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Initially working as a journalist and for a number of NGOs, she devoted her time to helping to repair homes that had been damaged by heavy bombing. Chayes recounted how she could not obtain the materials needed, however, because the Governor would award himself stone and sell it at grossly inflated prices to the international military.

Once Chayes left Kandahar she began to realise the extent of endemic corruption, not just in Afghanistan but around the world. She said, “I came to understand that this isn’t a fraying around the edges kind of government system. This kind of corruption network is structured and organised.”

Burgis spoke about his experiences as a correspondent for the Financial Times in South and West Africa. Africa is often described as a paradox of plenty. While the continent is frequently viewed as a symbol of extreme poverty, it is in many regards one of the wealthiest places on earth in terms of its abundance of basic natural resources.

On the subject of corruption in Nigeria, Burgis said: “It happens because the currency gets distorted… It happens because ultimately if you’re a country whose economies depend on shipping out raw resources, the contract or the deal between the rulers and the ruled breaks.”

Corruption is not just a local issue – there are global implications at every level.

Bennett-Jones asked the panellists: “If you take these situations as you described, how much of it ends up at the top of the system in the City of London, Zurich and the banks in New York and therefore will never be resolved because they are just too powerful to deal with?”

Chayes responded: “The countries that are on the positive end on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index are the ones that are exporting corruption services to the corrupt governments.”

Why is property market in London so inflated? A lot is fuelled by stolen overseas money. Tom Burgis His book Looting Machine #frontlineclub

— Kate Adams (@KateAdams3) June 24, 2015

Even though the extent of widespread corruption may seem impenetrable, Chayes believes that we can all play an individual role in combatting its influence.

“I have my money in HSBC. I intend to take my money out of HSBC. There’s a role for us as custodians of all of our values to play in piercing some of this hypocrisy.”

More information on The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth by Tom Burgis is available here.

Click here for more information on Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes.

We Were Rebels tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013.

As a child soldier, Agel was taught to kill and lost almost all of his male relatives to violence. Later he managed to flee via Kenya to Australia, where he became a professional basketball player and returned to South Sudan a free man. As the captain of the national basketball team, he coaches his fellow teammates through their very first international match against Uganda. The conflicts within the team bear a striking resemblance to the political problems festering across the country.

Directed by Katharina von Schroeder and Florian Schewe
Duration: 92′
Year: 2014

Every year thousands of Africans leave their families behind in search of a better life in Europe. Ditte Haarløv Johnsen‘s intimate portrayal of everyday life after emigration explores the lives of three very different African immigrants, from three different places, who have embarked on a perilous journey to reach a common destination: Europe.

With rawness and dignity, Days of Hope presents personal experiences of migration and the obstacles faced by African immigrants in Europe.

Directed by Ditte Haarløv Johnsen
Duration: 75′
Year: 2013