Africa Eye

In the DRC’s capital city, wrestling has helped an extraordinary woman to escape the violent streets on which she grew up. As a fighter, Shaki is an inspiration for dozens of street children, and her home has become a refuge for girls trying to escape the thugs, rapists, and pimps of Kinshasa’s slums. BBC Africa Eye follows Shaki as she steps into the wrestling ring, fights to give her daughter a chance in life, and takes on other women who have very different ideas about how to raise teenage girls.

The rosewood tree is one of the most trafficked species on earth. When it's cut it bleeds a blood-red sap. Having exhausted stocks elsewhere, Chinese traders have turned to West Africa, especially southern Senegal, where trees are cut down and smuggled into neighbouring Gambia and then all the way onto China. For a year BBC Africa Eye, with Umaru Fofana, has been investigating the million-dollar trade in trafficked rosewood.

Dreams of ordinary Africans are demolished, as a construction giant collapses. But a leaked computer drive containing thousands of emails, messages and documents rings alarm bells about how the firm was run. Do the British bosses, who deny all allegations, have questions to answer?

Mathare, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi, is facing an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus, but heavy-handed policing has already led to tragedy. Africa Eye asks: is the Coronavirus cure far deadlier than the disease?

Coronavirus has been an opportunity for some people; an opportunity to make money selling fake cures for the deadly coronavirus. Africa Eye and Anas Aremayaw Anas go undercover to expose the masterminds of a Covid-19 scam.

There are increasing fears for food security in East Africa with mounting evidence of a new wave of desert locusts. Earlier in the year, billions of the insects destroyed crops across the region – with the UN warning a second generation would be even more destructive. Now, despite international efforts, those fears appear to be coming to pass. When the first wave hit, Albert Lemasulani gave up his life to fight the swarms - leaving his family, his goats, and his newborn son behind to try and prevent a plague.

In Somalia, the official death toll for Covid-19 is very low, but why do Mogadishu's graveyards tell a different story? Africa Eye investigates the reality of coronavirus in Somalia, a country whose healthcare system has been devastated by three decades of conflict.

More than 2,000 medical workers in Ghana have been infected by coronavirus since the outbreak began. The country has faced a severe lack of essential protective equipment like face shields, masks and suits. Our investigation with Anas Aremeyaw Anas shows how some medical workers are profiteering at the expense of their colleagues.

Libya, January 2020. Twenty-six unarmed cadets are killed by an explosion for which no-one has ever claimed responsibility. What hit them? Where did it come from? And which foreign powers are secretly fuelling Libya's war? BBC Africa Eye investigates.

An explosion in Lagos, Nigeria rocked the city to its core. 23 people were killed, and a girls' boarding school totally destroyed. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the country's state-owned oil firm, said the blast in March occurred as a result of a truck that hit gas cylinders near one of its petroleum pipelines. But BBC Africa Eye's investigation indicates this explanation for the cause of the blast, that decimated over 100,000 square metres of the city, is wrong.

A BBC News Arabic investigation has uncovered systemic child abuse inside Islamic schools in Sudan, with boys as young as five years old routinely chained, shackled and beaten by the “sheikhs”, or religious men in charge of the schools. The investigation also found evidence of sexual abuse. For 18 months, reporter, Fateh Al-Rahman Al-Hamdani, filmed inside 23 schools across Sudan. He found boys shackled and chained and witnessed brutal routine beatings.

The best scams always come in disguise. And Crowd1 is the most audacious scam we’ve ever seen. It looks like a high-tech marketing business that’s making a ton of money for people across Africa. All you need is a smartphone and some hustle. But behind the promises and the hype, BBC Africa Eye’s Ayanda Charlie finds some ugly truths, some wealthy scammers, and a whole pyramid of lies.

BBC Africa Eye has uncovered damning evidence of a thriving underground trade in stolen children in Kenya, including shocking undercover footage of children being stolen to order and sold on the streets of Nairobi for as little as $450.

South Africa has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Africa. The backbone of the country’s response were community health workers with a mission to test and identify the infected. Predominately women, these front line workers were tasked with navigating the stark inequalities of South Africa to test those in some of the richest neighbourhoods on the continent and also people living in some of it’s densest townships, where social distancing is impossible. Filmed over six months, BBC Africa Eye follows Tshego, a nurse and mother from the Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, fighting a virus that brought her face to face with stigma, poverty and corruption.

In November 2020, #BBCAfricaEye released an investigation into child trafficking that sent shockwaves throughout Kenya. Many of the children featured in the film were stolen. But others were willingly sold by their own mothers, often for tiny sums. This is the story of one mother and her baby, trapped between poverty and the child traffickers.