Photos and Story by Jacob Kushner for NACLA.
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Leaving China in Pursuit of the African Dream
uncategorized In 2009, China surpassed the United States as the continent’s largest trading partner. By 2012, its trade with Africa was double the United States’.
Western media tend to inflate the rhetoric surrounding China’s rise in Africa. Headlines are often resentful and sometimes border on fear-mongering: China is “winning” Africa from the West. The United States must “catch up” to China if it hopes to maintain economic, security and cultural relevance in Africa. A monolithic “China” sees Africa as a place to get rich quick, and doesn’t care much about the consequences.
But behind these hyperbolic headlines there are people, actual Chinese moving to Africa — one million over the past 15 years according to the rough but generally accepted estimate.
“Big projects completed by big, government-owned companies dominate the headlines about the advancing Chinese agenda in Africa,” wrote Howard French, a longtime New York Times correspondent in both China and Africa, in China’s Second Continent. “But history teaches us that very often reality is more meaningfully shaped by the deeds of countless smaller actors, most of them for all intents and purposes anonymous.”
Read the full article at VICE, and watch the full documentary, Chinafication of Africa, which I helped produce, on VICE HBO on April 22nd, 2016.
Five years after the earthquake, Haiti remains on unsteady ground
GlobalPost/GroundTruth, uncategorizedIlE-A-VACHE, Haiti — One day in October, 81-year-old Mascary Mesura was working in his garden of corn and coconut trees when the mayor of this small island off the southern coast of Haiti approached and told him to get out of the way.
“He said ‘the tractors are coming. We are going to build a lake to grow fish,’” says Mesura. “I asked for an explanation. I told him all the things we grow there. I was standing in my garden and he told the tractor to advance.”
The mayor, Fritz César, stood and watched while police handcuffed Mesura and his wife, forcing them to watch as their livelihood was uprooted, all 28 of their coconut trees toppled to make room for a fish pond to feed tourists.
The demolition was part of the Haitian government’s $260 million plan to develop Ile-a-Vache into a Caribbean tourism destination akin to the Bahamas or St. Martin.
Five years after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ravished an already troubled nation, Haiti’s leaders hope tourism along with mining, manufacturing and agriculture will help the country leave its legacy as an impoverished nation behind.
Read the full GroundTruth story on GlobalPost.
Reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.
PHOTO: Congo’s subsistence miners
uncategorizedFrom the book, China’s Congo Plan
PHOTO: The return of Carnival
uncategorizedAfter its cancellation in the wake of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, the Jacmel Carnival celebration returns
PHOTO: Haiti, one year after the earthquake
uncategorizedHaitians observe the first anniversary of the 2010 earthquake through song and prayer.
PHOTO: Haiti’s female peacekeepers
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Photography
uncategorizedPHOTO: “Tent Life”
uncategorizedAn IOM funded production and screening of short films in a Port-au-Prince IDP camp following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
PHOTO: Haiti ablaze in election protests
uncategorizedHaitians protest against the declared results of the 2010 Presidential election.