Africa Eye

In Nigeria, thousands of young people are addicted to codeine cough syrup – a medicine that’s become a street drug. The Nigerian senate estimates that 3 million bottles of codeine syrup are drunk every day in just two states – Kano and Jigawa. But who makes this syrup? And who sells it to Nigeria’s students? BBC Africa Eye went undercover to investigate.

Thousands of women across West Africa have been enslaved by a centuries old practice called “trokosi”. Girls are forced to live and work with priests in religious shrines, for the rest of their lives, to “pay” for the sins of family members. Although the practice has officially been banned in Ghana, it’s still happening there and in other parts of West Africa but on a smaller scale. Twenty years after she was freed from this practice, Brigitte Sossou Perenyi goes on a journey to understand what trokosi really is and why her family gave her away.

Almost one hundred football officials across West Africa and Kenya have been caught on camera accepting cash in a sting operation. It’s part of a two-year long undercover investigation by controversial Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. BBC Africa Eye has had exclusive access to the footage for their latest documentary. In one case a World Cup bound assistant referee from Kenya accepted six hundred dollars from a man posing as an official of a Ghanaian premiership team.

Hundreds of shocking mobile phone videos from Cameroon have surfaced in the past six months. They are coming from the English speaking part of the country, where rebels are fighting to form an independent state called "Ambazonia". BBC Africa Eye have analysed these films, shedding fresh light on who is responsible for the violence.

It's is one of the poorest parts of South Africa. But poverty is not the biggest problem here. Dieplsoot is the most dangerous part of South Africa — especially if you are a woman.

BBC Africa Eye’s latest investigation goes undercover in the Somali neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya, to expose a form of religious healing gone badly wrong. Islamic rehab centres offer treatment to people suffering from addiction or mental health problems. But Somali reporter Jamal Osman discovers that, behind the closed doors of one rehab clinic, patients are routinely abused, beaten, and forced to drink a toxic liquid called harmala.

On a riverbank in rural Malawi, police find a headless corpse – one of dozens of victims apparently killed for body parts used in ritual magic. Legendary Ghanaian journalist Anas Arameyaw Anas and local reporter Henry Mhango set out to investigate the deaths, and to find out who profits from these brutal killings.

In 2017, mobile footage of a plain-clothed policeman gunning down two apparently unarmed men went viral in Kenya. But who is this cop and what prompted the shooting? BBC Africa Eye joins controversial officer Ahmed Rashid as he seeks to rid the streets of gangsters and criminals. For the first time cameras are allowed to follow his team in action in the Somali neighbourhood of Eastleigh, Nairobi. We hear from those who praise his unit and those who condemn them for what they say are a spate of extra-judicial killings.

In July 2018 a horrifying video began to circulate on social media. It shows two women and two young children being led away at gunpoint by a group of Cameroonian soldiers. The captives are blindfolded, forced to the ground, and shot 22 times. The government of Cameroon initially dismissed the video as “fake news.” But BBC Africa Eye, through forensic analysis of the footage, can prove exactly where this happened, when it happened, and who is responsible for the killings.

Dozens of people were killed in clashes with government forces across the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016. They were protesting President Joseph Kabila's decision to postpone elections for another two years. Africa Eye follows the leading members of a non - violent citizen group called La Lucha, who campaign for political reform in DRC and for Kabila to step down. But will their call for free and fair elections ever become a reality?

Former Burundian intelligence agents say that the country’s security services are running secret torture and detention sites to silence dissent. Using cutting edge reconstruction techniques BBC Africa Eye examines one house in particular, which was filmed in a video posted on social media in 2016. A red liquid, which looked like blood, was seen pouring from its gutter. We ask if Burundi’s repression of opponents has now gone underground? The government has always denied any human rights violations, and declined to comment for this report.