Essay
Return to Nairobi.
In September 2017, I spent a week in Nairobi reporting on Kenya's turbulent politics. I wrote an essay on how the Kenyan capital is a very different place to the one I grew up in back in the 1970s. Here are my personal impressions of how Nairobi has changed, for better and for worse, over the course of 40 years.
TV
Much of my reporting in recent months has been on the Brexit referendum, and its aftermath. Here's a short film from London about the 3 million EU nationals living in the UK. With the British government about to trigger Article 50, what are their concerns? And what will Brexit's impact be on the British economy? A report from Birmingham, Somerset and the City of London
Brexit Special
I made this 25 minute film about what a withdrawal from the EU might mean for the United Kingdom. It was broadcast the day before the June 23rd 2016 Referendum. I travelled across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (and wished I could have gone to Wales..) and beyond, to try and capture the whole diversity of voices and issues before the momentous vote. It was broadcast internationally on Al Jazeera English. I hope you enjoy it.
Other recent stories
Jack Straw was Tony Blair's Foreign Minister at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Is he haunted by the mistakes made before and during that war? I had a 25 minute interview with Mr Straw in London in May 2016. We discussed Iraq, Chilcot, his old boss Tony Blair, Jeremy Corbyn and the upcoming referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.
I made this TV report in March 2016 about the problem of air pollution in London. An environmental group, ClientEarth, is taking the UK government to court. British drivers were encouraged to switch to diesel cars in recent years, because these contribute less to global warming. But diesel cars are themselves significant polluters, through emissions of Nitrogen Dioxide.
Here's a tv report I made in February 2016 on the trafficking of young Nigerian girls to Italy, and the dangers other young refugees and migrants face in Rome. I'm afraid it's not a very cheerful story, but the issues are important.
In January 2016 I made a 30 min documentary for Al Jazeera English on begging around the world- comparing the role of beggars in a wealthy country -Sweden- with that of a developing country -The Philippines. What are popular and official attitudes towards beggars in these two very different countries? Is organised begging on the increase across the world? You can see the film, Begging For Life, here.
For other examples of my TV work, click on an image below to play the full video report
News Reports
Africa
Europe
Asia
USA
Documentaries
Other writing
BA High Life Magazine, Sept 2014. I wrote a piece in September's British Airways Highlife Magazine about the colonial-era clubs of Lagos, still going strong more than 50 years after the British departed. You can read the article here
My 'top 10 books about Nigeria', The Guardian, September 2014. This was not an easy list to compile, and inevitably some people have disagreed with my choices. I wanted a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I had to make some very painful omissions. On the fiction side, perhaps I should have included works by Ben Okri, Cyprian Ekwensi and Helon Habila amongst others. On the non-fiction side, 'This House Has Fallen' by Karl Maier is a brilliant book that captures so many of Nigeria's problems. I felt, perhaps wrongly, that it may now be slightly out of date, and the time has come for a new overview of the Nigerian situation (or better still, an updated edition of 'This House Has Fallen'). Another non-fiction book I wanted to include was 'Lagos' by the late Kaye Whiteman in the 'Cities of the Imagination' series, an affectionate and erudite portrait of that most maligned of cities.
I should also have stressed that this 'top 10', with the exception of 'Things Fall Apart' at no.1, is not ranked in any order of significance/importance/worthiness etc
You can read my list here
Evening Standard, May 2014, on the Nigerian missing girls - A divided nation unites to fight for its lost girls
Latest blog posts from the Al Jazeera blogs website.