Complete and Utter Zebu

A documentary team from Norway’s TV2 channel, the country’s largest commercial broadcaster, went to Niger to make a film about the aid that flooded into the country in the wake of BBC TV reports about a famine there.

The odd thing was that they couldn’t find anyone there who knew anything about the famine. There was malnutrition and disease but “there was no one who had heard of anyone dying from the famine of 2005,” said producer Mats Ektvedt. They interviewed Niger’s prime minister, local farmers and people working in assorted aid programmes.

It seemed bizarre because, in 2005, the BBC – followed by many other outlets around the world – carried reports about a disastrous famine in Niger. One third of the population were said to be starving: “This is the only part of Niger where anyone has even tried to estimate how many people have starved to death,” said its reporter, “and the indications are that just in this town and the villages immediately surrounding it, thousands of people have died in the last few months.”

Esther Garvi, who has lived in Niger since she was six and whose family have run the Eden Programme for 20 years, supporting local agriculture, said: “To this day, I have yet to meet one person in the whole of Niger who knows of any person who died from not having food to eat. I know many people who have died from diseases and accidents, but in a hospitable country like Niger, I know of no one who would leave anyone to starve to death.”

The food aid which flooded in undermined the ability of local farmers to provide for the local population. Those children who were said to be dying of malnutrition were in reality suffering from diarrhoea or malaria, but the aid was not targeted at combatting disease.

Ektvedt made a different film than he had imagined. Famine Scam won third prize in the Monte Carlo TV Festival in 2008. But then the BBC revoked permission to use its footage; without it, the documentary is nothing like as powerful. We spoke to Mats Ektvedt, who pointed out that the documentary can be seen in its original form on Youtube and elsewhere. Part one (of six) is above.

The full story of the famine that never was is in Complete and Utter Zebu.