Fortune and fantasy on Africa's oil frontier
Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana's "Oil City." The giant fish monument at the Sekondi beachfront roundabout is a testament to the importance of fishing for this town. It seems fitting that the fish appears to be gasping for breath as overfishing and now the oil industry take their toll on local livelihoods. Photo by Christiane Badgley
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has launched a project page for Oil City Stories, my work in Ghana. Please visit the page, subscribe, like it on facebook and retweet! I need people who care about these issues to make their voices heard — getting the word out helps me secure the funding I need to continue this work.
I haven’t been posting much the past few days as I’m editing photos and videos. Starting in a few days the videos will go up on the websites of The Center for Public Integrity and The Pulitzer Center, my partners on the Ghana work.
With these videos, I give voice to people and concerns rarely heard in U.S./Western media coverage of the oil industry in Africa. We read about the oil industry in the business pages (or in articles focused on the business side of things) and then we read about MEND operations in the Niger Delta. We rarely hear anything about what happens between the signing of lucrative deals and the rebellions, yet if we want to understand (and avoid) the so-called “resource curse” this is where we need to focus our attention.
Between — it’s where things happen and it’s where I’m working. Stay tuned and please spread the word!
Christiane Badgley has been producing and editing documentary films for the past twenty years, with much of her work focused on the U.S. criminal justice system and post-colonial African politics and history.
