As most of you already know by now, Mirriah is one of my favourite places in Niger. It is an old village with an ancient heritage, rich in century old Baobab trees and known for its vegetable gardens. Situated 20km from Zinder, it is a place I love to go to for a Sunday excursion, […]

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I just read a BBC article where a large aid organization (in this case, Care International) still refers to the Niger Famine Scam as valid information.
In my heart, I will never be able to understand the aid industry, but if I follow its logic, here are some lessons to be learned:

Assume that all of Africa […]

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I recently learned that on September 11th 2008, Jan Egeland will interestingly enough be holding a speech in Norway relating to the ’strengths and weaknesses’ of journalism:
Role of the press; war/conflict/emerging nations
Jan Egeland, (Norway), former chief of United Nations Humanitarian Division has been followed by journalists for years. He will do a speech on our […]

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There is a time for everything, and tonight was my time to go out on television and speak up for the poor.

There is a whole debate going on about the aid organizations’ handling of “emergencies”, and the thing is, we can never forget that we are dealing with real human beings here. They may be […]

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I slept one hour last night, but I’m doing well. Had to be up at half past five, in order to appear live at quarter past seven this morning on God morgen Norge. It was a nice brief chat with Signe Tynning and Nils Gunnar Lie and I am left wondering what Norway is thinking.
The […]

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Norwegien Dagbladet came out with an article about the documentary that will air this evening. This roughly translates to:

Egeland accused of bluffing about starvation
By Cathrien Slaaen
In the documentary The Famine Scam, former UN aid coordinator Jan Egeland, together with the BBC, are accused of informing the world about a famine in Niger that didn’t exist.
During […]

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Today, TV2 Norway posted the following presentation about the “famine” of Niger, which will be airing on Monday the 3rd of March at 22.35pm:

En medieskapt katastrofe
Året er 2005. En fem måneder gammel gutt dør rett foran et TV-kamera, og BBC erklærer sultkatastrofe i Niger. Men tv-bildene forteller ikke sannheten.
FAKTA:
Se Dokument 2 på TV […]

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