Africa--Living with Corruption

A film by Elizabeth Jones for Insight News TV

In this disturbing film, the BAFTA Award-winning journalist Sorious Samura reveals how corruption has become normal and accepted in Africa -- it is one of the root causes of Africa's many problems. Sadly, most aid money given by the West never reaches those it is meant to help; it gets siphoned off by corrupt governments.

This program provides a sober portrait of how modern Africa really works. 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. Bribery is the modus operandi for obtaining basics such as hospital appointments, building their shacks, getting work and staying out of jail.

Samura returns home to Sierra Leone to live with a friend 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. In the slums, there is no water or electricity and Sierra Leoneans still have the worst life expectancy on the planet. Even a nine-year-old has to bribe his teachers just to be taught. Samura claims that, in many parts of Africa, school is a place where children learn to use power and status to get what they want.

52 min. Video or DVD. Sale $295. Video rental $85.