Africa at war and meaningful films (E413)

War and famine ravaged Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and much of the Sahel in the ‘80s leaving millions dead. Live Aid and Band Aid tried to paper over the cracks of famine but there was a proxy war being fought as Soviet bombers dropped American bombs. Now, the war, at least, is back and superpower involvement is guaranteed. The details may have changed but the larger picture remains the same. So just how dangerous is the situation there now? We asked Simon Tesfamariam, executive director of the New African Institute.

Leslee Udwin is a critically acclaimed filmmaker with an eclectic body of work, from ‘East is East’, which opened up Asian-themed culture to a national audience, to ‘Who Bombed Birmingham’, which helped release six innocent men after 17 years of wrongful imprisonment, and ‘India’s Daughter’, a film dealing with the terrible violence meted out to women and girls. There is clearly an overriding theme of humanism and justice running through her work and her charity Think Equal, a global education initiative for children, is no exception, so she boarded Sputnik to tell us more.

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Podcast https://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/sputnik-orbiting-the-world-1