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Editor’s note: This behind-the-scenes story follows an eight-month investigation into alleged COVID-19 corruption and profiteering in South Sudan, and the increasing tensions between the government and international aid organisations. The investigation was done in conjunction with Al Jazeera. Click here to read the main investigation, and click here to listen to a podcast about what we uncovered.
LONDON
It all started with a tipster who was angry that South Sudan appeared to be making it harder for people to find hand sanitiser by suspending imports and authorising one small domestic company to produce it – all while people were scrambling to find the gel.
Affordable housing push fuels land tensions in Burkina Faso
Thursday, 4 March 2021 05:00 GMT
Locals in Boassa sit in the village center discussing concerns about having their land being taken away in Burkina Faso, February 5, 2021. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Sam Mednick
About our Land coverage We shine a light on how land and property rights can empower communities worldwide.
Share: Project aims to build 40,000 affordable homes Villagers say developers are making unfair deals for land Government will look at reforms to land law
By Sam Mednick
BOASSA, Burkina Faso, March 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - W hile Joanny Nakoulima was visiting neighbours in January, bulldozers blazed through his farm in central Burkina Faso unannounced, destroying his crops within minutes.
6 Min Read
OUAGADOUGOU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Wiping her sandy fingers on her shirt, Balkissa Sawadogo for a moment rests her aching body from shovelling sand and gravel into piles.
Three years ago, as rains dried up, the 25-year-old single mother was forced to stop farming in her neighbourhood on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to begin the back-breaking work of selling sand to construction workers to support her family.
Her landlocked West African nation has been hard hit by drought and desertification caused in part by climate change.
Once-fertile land is now dry, forcing farmers that used to survive by cultivating it to change professions, often toiling from dawn until dusk in jobs that make it hard to scrape by.
On our radar
Syria’s decade of devastation
Next week marks 10 years since demonstrations against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were met with force, and an uprising that was part of the so-called “Arab Spring” spiralled into a long and brutal war. It is a conflict that has been marked, at different stages, by sieges, starvation, bombing, street fighting, chemical attacks, the destruction of hospitals, the manipulation of much-needed humanitarian aid. Diplomacy has largely failed, entire cities and towns have been destroyed, and more than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes, either becoming refugees or displaced people in their own country. Nobody knows exactly how many people have killed, although most agree that the number long ago surpassed 470,000. That doesn’t include lives lost to disease, hunger, or the children who have frozen to death in their tents. Pretty much every aid and advocacy group has a new report or statement about t