When 12-year-old Teresa had her first kiss at a party in London with another girl, the young Gambian had no idea how her sexual orientation would make life an everyday struggle when she returned home. Eight years later, she is on the run from Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s men in […]
On a stormy day in Dakar, Tina Gomis, a local woman in Sicap Mbao, laughs at the idea of selling her own excrement to the government. But this may soon become a reality in a city with a reputation for terrible waste management. A pioneering SMS service and waste treatment […]
There’s hardly a man to be seen in the maternity ward of the Maternal and Child Health Training Institute in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Despite the lack of any law forbidding men to enter the delivery room, fathers are normally not present during the birth of their own child […]
Senegal is the largest salt producer in west Africa, mining over 450,000 tonnes every year. Small-scale harvesters, who work in areas like Lake Retba and Fatick, are responsible for around one-third of production. However, many fail to iodise the salt. Annually, around 18 million children, mostly in Africa, are born […]
In Guinea, a land where witchcraft is sought for curing illness more than science, medicine men say the Ebola epidemic would have been over by now had they been properly included in the outbreak response. From broken bones, to impotence, to madness, these traditional healers say they have a potion, […]
Strict abortion laws in Senegal are forcing women to seek clandestine abortions and as a last resort kill their own infants, according to a new report by human rights groups. Backstreet abortions and infanticide, a consequence of the West African nation’s abortion legislation, account for 38 percent of detention cases […]
Ten-year-old Atahib goes to school in the Goudebou refugee camp in the savannah of Burkina Faso, not hoping to become a teacher or a doctor like his classmates. He wants to learn so he can better serve his Tuareg masters. Each day, Atahib wakes up before the Muslim morning call […]
Hissène Habré, the former president of Chad, will be the first African leader tried for crimes against humanity by another African state. On 20 July, the 72-year-old was escorted from a spacious, air-conditioned prison in Dakar’s scenic Cap Manuel neighbourhood to the Palais de Justice – a stark contrast to […]
When Mick-Sophie Anne started showing signs of puberty at age 10, her mother took a hot stone and firmly pushed it down on her daughter’s breasts in an attempt to flatten her chest. At dusk, in a small, dark kitchen out of sight of the neighbours, Priscille Dissake would heat […]
Hundreds of children flock at the site of a stranger in the Kutu Palong makeshift camp in southeastern Bangladesh, near the border with Burma. Some are wearing salvaged clothes; mostly, they are naked. “Hello, how are you?” they shout, repeating the one phrase they have picked up from the few […]
