Thousands of Kenyan villagers are being given free cash as part of a huge trial being run by an American non-profit, GiveDirectly. Why? Some aid organisations believe that simply giving people money is one of the most effective ways to tackle extreme poverty and boost development. After all, they argue, local people themselves know best how to use the funds to improve their lives. But does it work? Is it really a long term solution? In 2018, the BBC visited a Kenyan village whose residents received money at the start of the trial. Five years on, Mary Harper returns to see what’s changed.

Photo: Woman frying fish in village in western Kenya (BBC)

Reporter: Mary Harper Producer: Alex Last Studio Manager: Graham Puddifoot Series Editor: Penny Murphy Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross With special thanks to Fred Ooko

On 23 March 2021, the Ever Given – one of the largest container ships ever built – ploughed into the sandy bank of the Suez Canal, blocking the entire waterway. It stopped all traffic in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world for almost a week, causing a ‘ship jam’ of over 300 vessels and delaying deliveries of billions of pounds of vital food, fuel and medical supplies. The disruption to the global supply chain lasted for months.

How did such an advanced ship crash in one of the most closely monitored shipping lanes in the world? How did a team of engineers free the ship in just six days? And who or what is to blame?

Using never-before seen footage, testimony from witnesses speaking for the very first time, and expert analysis, this documentary aims to uncover the inside story of the Ever Given accident. And with over 2,500 shipping incidents a year, the film also asks if this was just a freak accident or whether it reveals a serious weakness in the world’s critical supply chain.

A joyful, beautiful, pain filled sound journey through South Africa - from a politically charged soundscape of the murder of striking miners, to the music of a living legend, Madosini, a Xhosa musician.

Singer and musician Nathaniel Mann, recent recipient of a Paul Hamlyn award for composition, travels to the Cape to find an irresistible blend of artists working with sound and music - reflecting both the joys and the pain of this conflicted and deeply unequal society.

Haroon Gunn-Sallie was born in prison - his parents under arrest for their part in the armed struggle against apartheid. Believing he was destined to be ‘an activist', he has channeled his activism into art, finding a surprising home in the mainstream fine art world - including London Frieze. Marikana is one of his most powerful works - an installation marking the anniversary of a massacre of striking miners in 2012. The audience enter a sealed black box, and experience a collage of sounds which take you from the mine shaft through a vivid soundscape of newsreel, loudhailers, demonstrations and bullets to the massacre. Moments later the sound gives way to a beautiful rendition of ‘Senzenina’ - a song asking ‘What have We Done?', reflecting the struggles South Africa has yet to overcome as a fledgling democracy.

Madonsini, a traditional Xhosa musician, is the first person to be recorded for the WOMAD Festival's Musical Elders Archive project, yet her fame remains limited within the world-music sphere, and the instruments she plays are in danger of being lost. "There is no-one playing this instrument now except for me and my friend. I want the instrument to live, not to die with me." Revered for her skills on two unique instruments, the uhadi (bow with calabash) and the umrumbhe (mouth bow), Madosini is also instrument maker, using specific wood she finds lying in the bush near her home. Nathaniel gets a lesson in playing the umrumbhe with mixed results...

Jenna Burchell was driving across the great Karoo - the desert also known as The Cradle of Mankind - when she noticed a white line running along the hillside next to the dusty road. It was a strata left behind after an ‘extinction event’, millennia ago, and so she began exploring the line - walking and gathering beautiful shattered rocks from the site. Using the Japanese technique of Kintsukuroi, repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, she turned these ancient rocks into ‘Songsmiths’ working with recorded sound, to make the rocks sing of the land where they have existed for millennia triggered in each sculpture by the touch of a human hand. These ‘Songsmiths’ are both a visual and an aural treat - magically singing, as hands clutch stroke or just hover above the surface of each rock.

We also get the chance to listen in on a work in progress created by the artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula, who is fascinated by the sonic web bells cast over the South African landscape. His work explores the way that slave bells became church bells became school bells - in a sonically overwhelming show, asking the audience to join in with ringing a whole host of bells….

A sideways looks at an extraordinary sonic landscape.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Strictly Come Dancing's head judge Shirley Ballas investigates a family story that her maternal great-grandmother abandoned her husband and children for a more exciting life in America. What Shirley discovers casts her great-grandmother in a completely new light.

On her father's side, Shirley pursues a rumour that she has black ancestors - a trail which leads her to colonial Cape Town and the era of slave trafficking to South Africa via the Indian Ocean.

Tayo Popoola explores Nigeria's enduring love of Jim Reeves.

Over 50 years after his death, the American country music legend has maintained his popularity to a truly remarkable extent.

Up until the 1980s, his label RCA continued to release new records almost yearly, and his many fans would eagerly snap them up. Today, his importance is still hotly discussed online, in message boards and chat rooms. Few musical forms appear more quintessentially American than country and western. But despite the genre's deep ties to cowboys and open skies, Nigeria became entranced by the fiddle and yodel heavy music. By the 1960s, as Nashville-based performers like Reeves and his producer Chet Atkins moved country toward an increasingly slick sound, the music had become a part of everyday Nigerian life, where it has remained. In this very personal journey, Tayo travels around Nigeria with his country music loving mother in tow, exploring how this continued popularity can be - at least partially - attributed to the spiritual qualities that Nigerian audiences hear in country. Too slow to work as dance music, filled with the otherworldly sounds of pedal steel and orchestral strings, and laced with a decidedly Christian morality, country music has become known as a contemplative style, designed to carry the listener beyond daily life. Tayo considers the impact of Jim Reeves on Nigerian legends like Chief Ebenezer Obey (who appears and sings in person on the programme), as well as his influence on younger contemporary musicians like Ogak Jay Oke and Stephen Rwang Pam.

Producer/Presenter: Tayo Popoola

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in November 2017.

Roger Law, the co-creator of Spitting Image, heads to Cape Town to meet South Africa's satirical puppets. What happens when he meets the rubber version of Nelson Mandela?

In a small studio under Table Mountain a dedicated group of puppeteers are keeping the satirical flame burning for South Africa. With rubber versions of their politicians. old and new, and the backing of one of the country's finest cartoonists Zapiro, they are making waves for the establishment. But how easy is this to do in a democracy that is so new? Comedy can be tricky in a country where race and politics are so highly sensitive.

Roger Law goes on set to talk to the writers and the performers of ZA News, South Africa's puppet show, as well as stand up comedians. He finds out what can - and can't be - said on air and on stage, and what really upsets the country's political elite. A portrait of South Africa through its evolving satirical scene, with a democracy only now finding that perhaps it can laugh at itself.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2013.

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.

Author and anti-apartheid campaigner Rian Milan travels across South Africa and wrestles with its troubled past, taking in Durban, Johannesburg and the Lost City.