Africa’s migrant trade is among the most lucrative. Can it ever be stopped?

Human trafficking in north and West Africa has become one of the most lucrative industries in the region. Some call it Africa’s new “slave trade” and for Assignment, Ben Zand reports from the countries involved.

As the EU tries to cut the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, he investigates how millions of euros of EU funding are being spent– and whether its efforts could be leaving some migrants in an ever more dangerous limbo.

He hears from the smugglers themselves who tell him how hard it will be to stop the trade, which employs thousands of people in some of the world’s poorest countries.

He traces the smuggling route back from the coast of Libya, the gateway to Europe ; through to the ghettos in the deserts of Niger: all the way to the origins of the trade in small villages in Southern Nigeria, where young girls are forced into years of prostitution for the price of a ticket to Europe.

Producer: Benjamin Zand, Joshua Baker, Estelle Doyle

(Photo: Benjamin Zand stands with a crowd of migrants)

Uganda has now taken in more than a million refugees who have fled civil war in neighbouring South Sudan. And more are coming every day. It’s said that Uganda has the most generous refugee policy in the world, with new arrivals given land and allowed to work. But the majority of South Sudanese refugees are women and children who have lost almost everything and, as Ruth Alexander discovers, the reality of starting a new life from scratch is far from straightforward.

(Photo: Josephine Fony and her baby move into their patch of untamed land in northern Uganda)

Malamharu Musa has 15 children with his two wives, and he says he might yet have a couple more. He is a farmer in rural Zinder in southern Niger. He says his children help him in the fields and Allah will help him feed them. In his village Mr Musa is not unusual. Women in Niger have more children, on average, than anywhere else in the world.

More than half the girls are married by the age of 15, soon to become mothers themselves. But Mr Musa is starting to realise that having so many children isn’t necessarily good for his wives, for the kids, or for the village. The government of Niger has already reached that conclusion – it can’t support such a fast growing population and has ambitious targets to reduce the fertility rate.

So is it time for traditions to change? For Assignment, Alastair Leithead reports from Niger, on the frontline of Africa’s massive population explosion.

This is the untold story of a group of Kenyan women who have managed to escape enslavement by the Islamist militant group Al-Shabab in Somalia. In an exclusive investigation for the BBC, Anne Soy discovers that Kenyan women are being abducted and trafficked to Somalia to become sex slaves for the group. They are only able to tell their stories because of one person - called ‘Salama’ - who is single handedly supporting these women when they return to their communities.

Producer: Charlotte Attwood

(Photo: Faith and Saomo)

For generations those who, for biological reasons, don't fit the usual male/female categories have faced violence and stigma in Kenya. Intersex people - as they are commonly known in Kenya - were traditionally seen as a bad omen bringing a curse upon their family and neighbours. Most were kept in hiding and many were killed at birth. But now a new generation of home-grown activists and medical experts are helping intersex people to come out into the open. They're rejecting the old idea that intersex people must be assigned a gender in infancy and stick to it and are calling on the government to instead grant them legal recognition. BBC Africa’s Health Correspondent Anne Soy meets some of the rural families struggling to find acceptance for their intersex children and witnesses the efforts health workers and activists are making to promote understanding of the condition. She also meets a successful gospel singer who recently came out as intersex and hears from those who see the campaign for inter-sex recognition as part of a wider attack on the traditional Kenyan family.

Helen Grady producing.

(Photo: Apostle Darlan Rukih, an intersex gospel singer)

The UN forecasts that the number of people living in Africa will double in the next 35 years. Nigeria, the fastest-growing nation, is expected to become the third largest country in the world by 2050. By the end of the century, almost 40% of the world’s population will live on this one continent. It raises questions about how countries – some of which are already facing big challenges – will cope with twice the number of inhabitants in just one generation. There are fears about the impact a demographic explosion will have on health, society and the environment. But others say Africa’s population boom could turn out to be a good news story. Ruth Alexander asks - how will a population boom change Africa?

(Photo: Onitsha-Asaba Highway. Credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei/Getty Images)

The violent riots on the streets of South Africa in recent weeks have seen foreigners killed, their shops looted and 5,000 left homeless. They are accused of taking jobs from locals in a country where high unemployment is a big concern - and an example of the gaping chasm that remains between rich and poor. So 21 years after Nelson Mandela pledged to liberate all South Africans from the continuing bondage of poverty and deprivation, why is South Africa one of the most unequal societies on the planet?

(Photo: South African man waves a stick in the air, while demonstrators are chanting. Credit: Stefan Heunis/Getty Images)

The mystery of Lalibela is just how did they do it? Eleven exquisite churches, differing from each other wildly in size, shape and style, connected by a labyrinth of underground tunnels, all carved by hand from a huge mound of volcanic rock in the Ethiopian highlands. Legend says it took the 12th century King Lalibela - inspired to create a new holy land after a visit to Jersusalem - just twenty three years to build the churches; but just a handful of tools have been uncovered by archaeologists and next to nothing is known of the labourers who created them.

Lalibela inspires wonder from local Ethiopians and the scores of tourists who visit it from all over the world . But these churches are not just static relics of a forgotten age, they live and breathe. Every day as the sun comes up over the 4000 metre peaks of Lalibela, local people spend a quiet moment praying to their favourite saints and the Virgin Mary. The Ethiopian Orthodox calendar is alive with special saints' commemorations days and festivals long fallen into obscurity in Western Christianity. On these days, pilgrims from all over the country arrive to pray at the churches, while priests chant ancient liturgical songs, wave incense burners and play traditional instruments throughout the night.

But can these traditions - which some say connect Ethiopian Orthodoxy back to the Biblical King Solomon and placed the church at the heart of the political establishment for some 1500 years - stay vibrant in a fast-changing modern world? The Orthodox church has been criticised by many for outdated practices such as kissing pictures of saints and focusing on sacred texts which are not in the Bible. As Ethiopia's economic development takes off, thousands of Ethiopians in urban centres are being attracted to a newer breed of more charismatic and dynamic Protestant church. Added to this the country's large Muslim minority is pressing for greater political representation, and for the first time, the country's Prime Minister is not from the Orthodox Church. Ethiopia is well and truly changing.

Celeste Hicks travelled to Lalibela to hear how Orthodoxy respond to these challenges, and just how strong the emotional attachment is of ordinary Ethiopians to their unique church.

In the city of Kaduna in northern Nigeria, the most normal of activities - a Saturday afternoon football match - can take on enormous significance. The city is divided by the river Kaduna into a Muslim-dominated north and a Christian-dominated south. The inter-religious violence has lasted 20 years.

But two youth teams - the mainly Muslim Zooboys and the mainly Christian YMCA teams - agreed to a game to celebrate world peace day. Celeste Hicks explores how economic and social pressures in this rapidly-growing city have exacerbated tensions between communities, who for years traditionally lived side by side. Post-election violence in 2011 - after supporters of the opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim, clashed with those of the winning PDP candidate Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian - has only entrenched animosity and suspicion further. Kaduna is in the centre of Nigeria and at the heart of the precariously balanced country, a microcosm of tensions seen across the north of Nigeria in a zone sometimes called the 'Middle Belt' - where the desert Muslim-dominated north meets the more verdant Christian-dominated south. The violence of Boko Haram and inter-religious violence in cities such as Jos continue to send shockwaves across the region. What hope is there for reconciliation between Christians and Muslims? This documentary meets the courageous Interfaith Mediation Centre, led by Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammed Ashafa. Based in Kaduna, they travel across the whole of the north of Nigeria trying to encourage the two communities to see eye to eye. Can simple activities like a community football match heal the divide? It asks if communities can truly forgive and forget without justice and reconciliation.

Dancer and drummer Guy Schalom hunts out the spirit of the new Egypt in one of its biggest cultural exports. To our ears, Baladi is the music of the bellydancer - kitsch and mock-Arab. But in its true form it is the essence of Egypt, 'of the country', 'home' in the deepest sense.

Our journey begins in Berlin, as bejwelled dancers from across Europe gather on a theatre stage ready to do battle for the title 'Miss Bellydance 2012'. They might not all know it, but the music which accompanies their gyrations is a knot of contradictions: an essence of the east inspired by western musical traditions, the spirit of rural Egypt made urban.

But the deepest contradictions rest with the very people who perform Baladi. What seems to us a provocative, alluring, even licentious dance for women in fact has roots in a ceremonial dance for men. As we discover in Cairo, deep divisions remain between those who think it is a vital expression of the oriental spirit and those committed to regenerating sexual stereotypes. So what is the reality of bellydance and Baladi in the new Egypt? Can it find any place amongst the street rappers and pop artists or is this an artform about to be consigned to realms of the tourist-pleasing clubs and cafes? As with so much in this rapidly changing culture, answers prove difficult to find.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012.

How are modern musicians re-imagining the role of the West African griot?

Traditionally griots belong to particular West African families who act as oral historians, advisors, story-tellers and musicians for their culture. Now a generation of artists living in the West, who have African roots, are learning musical techniques from the masters but creating songs and stories with contemporary relevance.

In a programme rich in musical sounds and poetic storytelling, writer Gaylene Gould explores what it means to be a griot today. When modern culture uses the term as a shorthand - what does it mean to call someone a griot?

Hereditary griot Seckou Keita, leads a music workshop at a primary school, teaching harp-like instrument the Kora. At the age of 10, Tunde Jegede travelled from England to Gambia to train with a master kora player. He now collaborates with both orchestras and the hip-hop artist HKB FiNN - who has changed the way he approaches writing lyrics and embraced the griot label. Sona Jobarteh, Tunde's sister, is a hereditary griot. She gives Gaylene a lesson in kora playing and discusses how her sex affects the role and why she is reluctant to call herself a griot.

Award winning poet and performer Inua Ellams has been performing at the National Theatre and Malian musician Fatoumata Diawara sells out gigs internationally- both are called griot by their fans but aren't entirely comfortable with the label. Fatoumata believes she couldn't address topics like female circumcision as a griot. London based spoken word artist Zena Edwards explains why she wants to honour the tradition. Reflecting on the importance of the tradition in its purest form, Tunde Jedege says "every time a griot dies it's like a library burning down."

Producer Claire Bartleet

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2012.

Nelson Mandela wrote a letter every day of his life. He also wrote diaries, kept notebooks, scratched out ideas for speeches and doodled his thoughts and meditations on scraps of paper.

In this programme Fergal Keane takes a journey through this special archive, which was bequeathed to the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 2009 and published by Macmillan in the book 'Conversations With Myself' in October 2010.

The archive reveals surprises, painful reminders and unanswered questions and offers insight into the experiences which led to Mandela's daily disciplines, life lessons and to the moral and political vision which inspired and continues to inspire so many.

We hear the voice of someone who is communicating not necessarily to a particular audience but who is laying out his personal thoughts. We are also given snatches of audio archive - conversations between Mr Mandela and one of his closest friends and colleagues, Ahmed Kathrada speaking on a range of subjects from lessons on how to fire a rifle, to Tracy Chapman.

We hear Mandela's reflections as an activist with the ANC in the 1960s. We hear his voice at the moment he is told he will be sent to Robben Island, and in more personal moments, recalling dreams about his wife Winnie and his children, during his years apart from his family. We hear diary excerpts written on the night of his release from Pollsmoor in February 1990, and drafts of his very early speeches as leader of the ANC. And we hear extracts from letters and diaries written during his years in retirement, as he observes the ongoing political struggles of his country.

Producer: Sarah Cuddon A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the poet Dr Jack Mapanje who is one of the most important living African poets. He was born into a poor household in a typical African village in 1944, when Malawi (then Nyasaland) was a British colony, but while he was still a child it became part of the Central African Federation, together with Northern and Southern Rhodesia.

Jack started writing poems, inspired by his despair at the political woes besetting his country. Although his book, Of Chameleons and Gods, was only sold in one book shop in Malawi, it won considerable acclaim around the world and was awarded the Rotterdam International Poetry Prize. He was ambitious and set up a writers group within his own University and, although he knew it was dangerous, felt compelled to continue with his writing. He was arrested in 1987 while drinking in a bar. The World Service broadcast a news item about Mapanje's arrest the following day and his cause was taken up by writers' groups and activists across the world. Dr Mapanje was held without charge or trial in Mikuyu Prison for more than three years, scarcely aware of the international campaign to free him. When he was finally released, again it was without warning or explanation. Believing his life was still in danger, he fled with his wife and children to Britain. He has lived here ever since and now lectures at the University of Newcastle.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Ave Maria by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Luxury: A guitar