World Culture Mosaic

Jakarta (AFP) – When an Indonesian mother dropped off her daughter at school in May, she did not expect her to become violently sick after eating lunch from the government's new billion-dollar free meal programme.

"My daughter had a stomachache, diarrhoea, and a headache," the woman told AFP on condition of anonymity about the incident in the Javan city of Bandung.

"She also couldn't stop vomiting until three in the morning."

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto touted the populist scheme as a solution to the high rates of stunted growth among children, as he carved his way to a landslide election victory last year.

But its rollout since January has stumbled from crisis to crisis, including accusations of nepotism, funding delays, protests and a spate of food poisonings.

It was slated to reach as many as 17.5 million children this year to the tune of $4.3 billion.

But so far it has only served five million students nationwide from January to mid-June, according to the finance ministry.

The poisoning issues were not isolated to that girl's school -- five others reported similar incidents.

But Prabowo has lauded the number of illnesses as a positive.

"Indeed there was a poisoning today, around 200 people out of three million," he said in May.

"Over five were hospitalised, so that means the success rate is 99.99 percent. A 99.99 percent success rate in any field is a good thing."

Large-scale aid programmes in Indonesia have a history of allegations of graft at both the regional and national levels.

Experts say this programme is particularly vulnerable, with little in the way of accountability.

"A big budget means the possibility of corruption is wide open, and with lax monitoring, corruption can happen," said Egi Primayogha, a researcher at Indonesia Corruption Watch.

"Since the beginning, the programme was rushed, without any good planning. There is no transparency."

The programme was rolled out soon after Prabowo took office in October and local investigative magazine Tempo reported that "several partners appointed" were Prabowo supporters in the election.

Agus Pambagio, a Jakarta-based public policy expert, said Prabowo rushed the plan, with critics saying there was little public consultation.

"Japan and India have been doing it for decades. If we want to do it just like them within a few months, it's suicide," he said.

"We can't let fatalities happen."

The plan's stated aim is to combat stunting, which affects more than 20 percent of the country's children, and reduce that rate to five percent by 2045.

Prabowo's administration has allocated $0.62 per meal and initially set a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.3 billion) for this year.

But authorities have been accused of delays and under-funding the programme.

A catering business in capital Jakarta had to temporarily shut down in March because the government had not paid the $60,000 it was owed. The case went viral and it eventually got its money back.

The government announced a $6.2 billion budget boost recently but revised it by half as problems mounted in its ambitious quest to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029.

Widespread cuts to fund the programme's large budget also sparked protests across Indonesian cities in February.

Yet some say the programme has benefited their child.

"It's quite helpful. I still give my son pocket money, but since he got free lunch, he could save that money," Reni Parlina, 46, told AFP.

However a May survey by research institute Populix found more than 83 percent of 4,000 respondents think the policy should be reviewed.

"If necessary, the programme should be suspended until a thorough evaluation is carried out," said Egi.

The National Nutrition Agency, tasked with overseeing free meal distribution, did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

The agency has said it will evaluate the scheme and has trained thousands of kitchen staff.

Kitchen partners say they are taking extra precautions too.

"We keep reminding our members to follow food safety protocols," said Sam Hartoto of the Indonesian Catering Entrepreneurs Association, which has 100 members working with the government.

While they seek to provide assurances, the debacles have spooked parents who doubt Prabowo's government can deliver.

"I don't find this programme useful. It poses more risks than benefits," said the mother of the sick girl.

"I don't think this programme is running well."

Agadir (Morocco) (AFP) – On the drought-stricken plains of Morocco's Chtouka region, cherry tomato farms stretch as far as the eye can see, clinging to life through a single, environmentally contentious lifeline: desalination.

"We wouldn't be here without it," said Abir Lemseffer, who manages production for the tomato giant Azura.

Severe drought driven by climate change has gripped the North African country since 2018, leaving Azura's 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of farms entirely dependent on desalinated water.

But the technology comes at a high cost -- both financially and environmentally.

It is energy-intensive, and in a country where more than half of the electricity still comes from coal, it carries a heavy carbon footprint.

Since 2022, Morocco's largest desalination plant, located nearby, has been producing 125,000 cubic metres (4.4 million cubic feet) of water a day.

The supply irrigates 12,000 hectares of farmland and provides drinking water for 1.6 million people in Agadir and surrounding areas, said Ayoub Ramdi of the regional agricultural development office.

By the end of 2026, officials hope to boost production to 400,000 cubic metres of water, half of which would be designated for agriculture.

Without that water, "a catastrophic scenario would loom over Morocco", said Rqia Bourziza, an agronomist.

Agriculture, which contributes about 12 percent to Morocco's overall economy, has been badly hit by six consecutive years of drought -- prompting the country to go all-in on desalination.

Across Morocco, there are 16 plants capable of producing 270 million cubic metres of water per year, with a target of reaching 1.7 billion cubic metres by 2030.

While around 1,500 farmers in the Agadir region make use of the water provided by the plant, others don't because it's simply too expensive.

Among them is Hassan, who grows courgettes and peppers on half a hectare of land and uses water from a well shared with 60 other farmers.

"I can't afford to use that water," he said, declining to give his full name.

Desalinated water is sold at $0.56 per cubic metre, excluding taxes, compared with $0.11 per cubic metre for conventional water.

That hefty price tag comes despite a 40 percent subsidy from public coffers.

Ali Hatimy, another agronomist, said "the cost of desalinated water significantly reduces the range of potential crops because only very high-value-added crops can offset it".

Bourziza insisted that desalination was "a very good alternative" but only for high-value crops such as tomatoes and orchard fruits.

Beyond the financial cost, desalination also exerts an environmental cost, said Hatimy.

"The production of desalinated water requires tremendous amounts of electrical energy and brine discharges impact marine ecosystems," he said.

Highly concentrated brine is a byproduct of the desalination process.

Ramdi, from the agricultural development office, said that "no impact" had been observed in the waters around Agadir, adding that the brine was diluted before its release.

While Morocco has a growing share of renewable energy, 62 percent of its electricity came from coal in 2023 and 14 percent from oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency.

The stakes in the wider region of Souss-Massa, which accounts for 85 percent of Morocco's fruit and vegetable exports, are high.

Nearly two million tonnes are produced each year, with a turnover of $1.1 billion.

Ramdi said the desalination plant had thus helped to protect $1 billion of revenue a year and more than a million jobs.

"Desalination has saved agriculture in Chtouka," said Mohamed Boumarg, walking through one of his tomato greenhouses.

"Before, I only cultivated five hectares because I was constrained by the amount of water I had. Groundwater was not sufficient," said the 38-year-old farmer who now grows 20 hectares of tomatoes, with 60 percent of his crop marked for export.

"Our survival depends on it," said Lemseffer of Azura. "Either we accept sacrificing some of our margin by using desalinated water, or we close up shop."

Brookes Point (Philippines) (AFP) – A nickel stockpile towers over farmer Moharen Tambiling's rice paddy in the Philippines' Palawan, evidence of a mining boom that locals hope a new moratorium will tame.

"They told us before the start of their operations that it wouldn't affect us, but the effects are undeniable now," Tambiling told AFP.

"Pangolins, warthogs, birds are disappearing. Flowers as well."

A biodiversity hotspot, Palawan also holds vast deposits of nickel, needed for everything from stainless steel to electric vehicles.

Once the world's largest exporter of the commodity, the Philippines is now racing to catch up with Indonesia. In 2021, Manila lifted a nine-year ban on mining licences.

Despite promised jobs and tax revenue, there is growing pushback against the sector in Palawan.

In March, the island's governing council unanimously passed a 50-year moratorium on any new mining permits.

"Flash floods, the siltation of the sea, fisheries, mangrove areas... We are witnesses to the effects of long-term mining," Nieves Rosento, a former local councillor who led the push, told AFP.

Environmental rights lawyer Grizelda Mayo-Anda said the moratorium could stop nearly 70 proposed projects spanning 240,000 hectares.

"You have to protect the old-growth forest, and it's not being done," she said.

In southern Palawan's Brooke's Point, a Chinese ship at a purpose-built pier waits for ore from the stockpile overlooking Tambiling's farm.

Mining company Ipilan says increased production will result in greater royalties for Indigenous people and higher tax revenues, but that means little to Tambiling's sister Alayma.

The single mother-of-six once made 1,000-5,000 pesos ($18-90) a day selling lobster caught where the pier now sits.

"We were surprised when we saw backhoes digging up the shore," she told AFP, calling a one-time compensation offer of 120,000 pesos ($2,150) insulting.

"The livelihood of all the Indigenous peoples depended on that area."

On the farm, Tambiling stirred rice paddy mud to reveal reddish laterite he says is leaking from the ore heap and poisoning his crops.

Above him, swathes of the Mantalingahan mountains have been deforested, producing floods he describes as "fearsome, deep and fast-moving."

Ipilan has faced protests and legal challenges over its logging, but its operations continue.

Calls to parent company Global Ferronickel Holdings were not returned.

For some in Palawan, the demand for nickel to power EVs has a certain irony.

"You may be able to... eliminate pollution using electric vehicles," said Jeminda Bartolome, an anti-mining advocate.

"But you should also study what happens to the area you are mining."

In Bataraza, the country's oldest nickel mine is expanding, having secured permission before the moratorium.

Rio Tuba employees armed with brooms, goggles, hats and scarves are barely visible through reddish dust as they sweep an access road that carries 6,000 tonnes of ore destined for China each day.

Company senior vice president Jose Bayani Baylon said mining turned a barely accessible malarial swamp into a "first-class municipality".

"You have an airport, you have a port, you have a community here. You have a hospital, you have infrastructure which many other communities don't have," he told AFP.

He dismisses environmental concerns as overblown.

With part of its concession tapped out, the company is extending into an area once off-limits to logging but since rezoned.

Thousands of trees have been cleared since January, according to locals, but Baylon said "under the law, for every tree you cut, you have to plant 100".

The company showed AFP a nine-hectare plot it spent 15 years restoring with native plants.

But it is unclear to what degree that will be replicated. Baylon concedes some areas could become solar farms instead.

Nearby, Indigenous resident Kennedy Coria says mining has upset Mount Bulanjao's ecosystem.

"Honeybees disappeared where we used to find them. Fruit trees in the forest stopped bearing fruit," the father-of-seven said.

A fifth of the Philippines' Indigenous land is covered by mining and exploration permits, according to rights group Global Witness.

Legally, they have the right to refuse projects and share profits, but critics say the process is rarely clear.

"There are Indigenous peoples who have not received any royalties for the past 10 years," said Rosento.

Coria, who can neither read nor write, said he must sign a document each year when accepting what he is told is his share of Rio Tuba profits.

"We get about four kilos of rice from the community leader, who tells us it came from the company," he said.

Rio Tuba said funds are distributed in coordination with the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), which is meant to represent the communities.

But some say it acts in the interests of miners, attempting to persuade locals to accept concessions and the terms offered by companies.

The NCIP referred questions to multiple regional offices, none of which replied. The government's industry regulator declined interview requests.

While Palawan's moratorium will not stop Rio Tuba's expansion or Ipilan's operations, supporters believe it will slow further mining.

There are looming legal challenges, however.

A recent Supreme Court decision struck down a mining ban in Occidental Mindoro province.

Backers remain confident though, and Rosento said the council would stand firm.

"Responsible mining is just a catchphrase," she said.

Kamyanka (Ukraine) (AFP) – There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko's small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians were pushed out that she and her husband Viktor started demining it themselves -- with rakes.

Further along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev began clearing the fields with his farm machinery.

"My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months," he said.

"Absolutely everyone demines by themselves," declared Igor Kniazev on his farm half an hour from Larisa's.

Ukraine is one of the great bread baskets of the world, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up in your hands and smell it.

But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most mined in the world, experts told AFP.

More than three years of unrelenting artillery barrages -- the biggest since World War II -- have sown it with millions of tons of ordnance, much of it unexploded.

One in 10 shells fail to detonate, experts estimate, with as much as a third of North Korean ordnance fired by Russia failing to go off, the high explosives moulding where they fall.

Yet the drones which have revolutionised the way war is fought in Ukraine may also now become a game-changer in demining the country.

Ukraine itself and some of the more than 80 NGOs and commercial groups working there are already using them to speed the mammoth task of clearing the land, with the international community pledging a massive sum to the unprecedented effort.

But on the ground it is often the farmers themselves -- despite the dangers and official warnings -- who are pushing ahead on their own.

Like the Sysenkos.

They were among the first to return to the devastated village of Kamyanka, which was occupied by the Russian army from March to September 2022.

Two weeks after its recapture by Ukrainian soldiers, Larisa and Viktor went back to check their house and found it uninhabitable, without water or electricity.

So they let the winter pass and returned in March 2023 to clean up, first taking down the gallows Russian soldiers had set up in their yard.

And they began demining. With their rakes.

"There were a lot of mines and our guys (in the Ukrainian army) didn't have time to take care of us. So slowly we demined ourselves with rakes," said Larisa cheerily.

Boxes of Russian artillery shells are still stacked up in front of their house -- 152mm howitzer shells to be precise, said Viktor with a mischievous smile.

"I served in the artillery during Soviet times, so I know a bit," the 56-year-old added.

That summer a demining team from the Swiss FSD foundation arrived and unearthed 54 mines in the Sysenkos's field.

They were probably laid to protect a 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled gun -- which looks like a big tank -- with which the Russians could hit targets up to 24 kilometres (15 miles) away.

The PFM-1 anti-personnel mines they found are sensitive enough to detonate under the weight of a small child, exploding under only five kilograms of pressure.

Known as the "flower petal" or "butterfly" mine, they blend horrifyingly well into fields and forests, with their petal shape and khaki colour.

They are banned under the 1997 Ottawa International Convention, to which Russia never signed up.

Ukraine said on Sunday it was withdrawing from the treaty.

The deminers told the Sysenkos "to evacuate the house".

"Under their rules, we couldn't stay there. So we obeyed. The demining machine went back and forth and there were tons of explosions under it."

With its gutted homes, Kamyanka still looks like a ghost village but about 40 people have moved back. (Its pre-war population was 1,200.)

Many fear the mines and several people have stepped on them -- "99 percent on the flower petal ones", said Viktor.

Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and are back at work in the vast fields famous for Ukraine's intensely black and fertile "chernozem" soil, which is rich in humus.

"If you look at the villages around here, farmers have adapted tractors themselves to clear their land and they are already planting wheat and sunflowers," Viktor added.

Ukraine's "cereal production fell from 84 million tons before the war to 56 million tons" last year, a drop of one-third, agriculture minister Vitaliy Koval told AFP.

"Ukraine has 42 million hectares (103 million acres) of agricultural land. On paper, we can cultivate 32 million hectares. But usable, uncontaminated land not occupied by Russia -- (we have) only 24 million hectares," he added.

A fifth of Ukraine's total territory (123,000 square kilometres, 48,000 square miles) is "potentially contaminated" by mines or explosives, according to government data.

That's an area roughly the size of England.

So does that make Ukraine the most mined country in the world?

"I think that is probably true in terms of the most unexploded bombs and shells and the most mines in the ground," said Paul Heslop, the United Nations Mine Action Service adviser in Ukraine.

Like all experts AFP talked to, he said it was impossible to make an accurate count in a country at war with a front line stretching 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) and its Russian-controlled areas inaccessible.

"(But) if you have got maybe four to five million unexploded shells or munitions, and three to five million mines, you potentially have 10 million explosive devices in the ground."

Pete Smith, who leads the HALO Trust's 1,500 staff in Ukraine, is a veteran of demining Iraq and Afghanistan.

But "I can say with a large degree of certainty" that no other country has been strewn with so many explosives, he said.

Some semblance of normal life has returned for the Sysenkos.

Their two dogs frolic around a sign marked "Danger Mines".

Birds now nest in the bullet and shell holes in the peach-coloured walls of their farmhouse.

But the demining will be going on for some time around them.

To get some idea of how thankless it can be, the Swiss FSD team found only the remnants of three explosives after two years of searching a nearby 2.6-hectare plot (about the size of three football fields).

"Metal contamination was so intense that our detectors became unusable. They were constantly going off," their site chief told AFP.

But after checking the thousands of metal fragments they had found, almost all turned out not to be dangerous.

The snail's pace of the meticulous process exasperates farmer Kniazev, who rattles off his gripes with the demining groups at machine gun pace.

"Every year they promise: 'Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll clear all the fields.'" So in the end, he did it himself.

Like the Sysenkos, Kniazev went back to his land as soon as the Russians withdrew and has since demined 10 hectares by himself.

He hopes to finish the final 40 within a year.

How?

"I took a metal detector and cleared the mines," he shot back.

"I was on my tractor when the harrow (being dragged behind) hit a mine and it exploded."

Kniazev managed to repair the tractor but the harrow was a write-off.

"I was lucky," he said with a twinkle in his steel blue eyes.

Others not so much. "Demining will take a long, long time because people keep detonating mines," he said.

"Dozens (of farmers) around here have already hit TM anti-tank mines. Many of our folks also stepped on OZM mines."

These Soviet-era "jumping" anti-personnel mines are particularly dangerous, leaping up a metre (three feet) when triggered and spraying 2,400 bits of shrapnel at everything within 40 metres.

Kniazev has been turning the remnants of Russian shells into pipes.

"I'll make a lamp" with that empty cluster bomb on the floor, he said.

A prosperous farmer before the war, he is slowly getting back on his feet despite losing a large part of his agricultural machinery.

He had just planted wheat after growing potatoes last year. He plans to diversify into mushrooms, which are highly profitable, he said.

Andriy Ilkiv lost his left leg below the knee when an anti-personnel mine exploded under his foot on September 13, 2022.

"I returned to work about four months later," said the head of a Ukrainian Interior Ministry demining team, even though the father-of-five was eligible for an office job because of his disability.

"I'm used to this work, I like it," he told AFP.

"Staying in an office isn't for me," he added, his colleagues gently ribbing him as they begin their day's work, the engine of their huge 12.5-ton German-made excavator already humming.

Kniazev said many Ukrainians work in demining for the good pay and to avoid conscription.

Former hairdresser Viktoria Shynkar has been working for HALO Trust, the world's biggest non-governmental demining group, for a year.

And she happily admitted the pay was one part of what drew her to this field in Tamaryne near Mykolaiv, not far from the Black Sea.

The 1,000 euros ($1,180) monthly wage she gets after the three weeks of training is as much as a young doctor is paid.

And despite the heavy body armour and helmet, it is much less tiring than being a hairdresser, where she hated making small talk with customers and was always on her feet.

"Before I used to cut hair. Now I cut grass (looking for mines). Before I cut to the millimetre. Now it's to the centimetre," the 36-year-old said.

You need to be precise. In a field nearby, Shynkar and her colleagues uncovered 243 TM-62 Russian landmines, each armed with enough high explosive to blast through the armour of a battle tank and kill its crew.

The Ukrainian government wants to clear 80 percent of its territory by 2033, despite some questioning how the work will be funded and coordinated, never mind problems with corruption.

"I've seen contracts worth millions that made no sense," a foreign expert, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.

"So there are clearly things going on under the table."

But some "of the most significant innovations in mine clearance in 20 to 30 years" are also happening in Ukraine, said Smith of the HALO Trust.

"Drones have been incredibly useful, particularly in areas we can't enter safely but they still allow us to survey the area," said Sam Rowlands, the trust's survey coordinator in Ukraine.

It uses 80 drones with various sensors depending on the ground conditions.

The images are sent to their headquarters near Kyiv to map out the minefield and are used to train AI in detecting different types of mines.

Volodymr Sydoruk, a data analyst there, works on the algorithms from partner company Amazon Web Services.

He enters multicoloured code for each type of mine that appears on his giant screen.

It is still early days for their machine learning but it is "already around 70 percent accurate, which is not bad", said Sydoruk.

And AI is likely to make drones a lot more effective in the future, experts say.

"One day we will see demining robots working 23 hours a day, with no risk to human lives," the UN's Heslop said.

"In five or 10 years, everything will be much more automated, thanks to what is happening today in Ukraine," he added.

Then Viktor and Larisa will finally be able to retire their rakes.

Cairo (AFP) – As belly dancing gains popularity internationally, young Egyptian performers are working to restore its reputation at home, pushing back against decades of stigma to reclaim the dance as part of their artistic heritage.

Once iconic figures of Egypt's cinematic golden age, belly dancers have watched their prestige wane, their art increasingly confined to nightclubs and wedding halls.

"No woman can be a belly dancer today and feel she's truly respected," said Safy Akef, an instructor and great-niece of dance legend Naima Akef, a fixture on the silver screen during the 1950s.

Despite her celebrated lineage, Safy, 33, has never performed on stage in Egypt.

"Once the show ends, the audience doesn't respect you, they objectify you," she told AFP.

Today, belly dance is known for skin-baring theatrics performed by foreign dancers and a handful of Egyptians.

The shift has fuelled moral disapproval in the conservative society and pushed even the descendants of iconic starlets away.

"People ask me all the time where they can see belly dancing that does justice to the art," said Safaa Saeed, 32, an instructor at a Cairo dance school.

"I struggle to answer," she told AFP.

Saeed, who was enchanted by Akef as a child, is now part of a movement led by choreographer Amie Sultan to reframe the art as part of Egyptian heritage, fit for theatres, festivals and UNESCO recognition.

A classically trained ballerina turned belly dancer, Sultan prefers to call what is formally known as oriental dance baladi, from the Arabic word "balad", meaning homeland.

"Baladi reflects the soul of who we are."

"But now it carries images of superficial entertainment, disconnected from its roots," she told AFP.

This disconnection, Sultan said, stems from shifting moral codes -- and colonial baggage.

In her book "Imperialism and the Heshk Beshk", author Shatha Yehia traces the artform's roots to ancient Egypt, but says the modern colloquial term only emerged in the 19th century, coined by French colonisers as danse du ventre, or "dance of the belly".

While descriptive, the phrase exoticised the movement and shaped perceptions both at home and abroad.

"Heshk beshk", an old onomatopoeic Egyptian expression evoking a performer's shaking moves, "is not merely a label for the dancer", Yehia writes.

"It is the Egyptian vernacular version of a femme fatale, the destructive woman who wields her body and feminine power to get what she wants. It's not just a label of vulgarity or immorality, it's synonymous with evil and debauchery."

Yehia argues that views on "heshk beshk" -- now shorthand for provocative, lowbrow dancing -- were shaped both by Western imperialism and local conservatism.

The fallout has been generational.

Akef's great-aunt was a star who "acted, danced and created iconic film tableaux".

But Safy instead has chosen to train others, including in Japan, where she spent three years teaching Egyptian folk and belly dance.

Sultan launched the Taqseem Institute, named after the improvisational solos of Arabic music, in 2022.

Since then, dozens of women have been trained at the school, seven of whom now teach full-time.

The students are trained not only in choreography, but also in musicality, history and theory.

They study the evolution of Egyptian dance from pre-cinema figures like Bamba Kashshar and Badia Masabni through the golden age icons like Tahiya Carioca and Samia Gamal.

Sultan even takes the message to universities, giving talks to demystify the art form for new audiences, while her dancers work to preserve its history.

In 2023, she staged El-Naddaha, a performance blending Sufi themes with traditional and contemporary Egyptian movement.

Still, challenges remain.

"We want to have a place of our own -- like the old theatres -- a teatro where we can regularly perform," Saeed said.

Sultan is also pushing for official recognition.

She has begun the process of campaigning for the dance to be inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

But the path is long and requires support from the country's culture authorities.

For the time being, the dancers at Taqseem focus on their next performance.

Barefoot and clad in fitted dancewear, they hold one final run-through, undulating to a melody by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum as the beat of a tabla drum echoes.

It's a dream come true for Saeed, who has been dancing since she was a child.

"I believe it's in our blood," she said with a smile.

Dhaka (AFP) – The memory of Bangladeshi police with shotguns twice blasting the young protester beside him still haunts Hibzur Rahman Prince, one year after a revolution that has left the country mired in turmoil.

That killing, along with up to 1,400 others as Sheikh Hasina tried to cling to power last year, overshadows Bangladesh as political parties jostle for power.

Prince shuddered as he recalled how the student's bleeding body collapsed at his feet.

"His body was lacerated," said Prince, who helped carry him to hospital.

Medics told him that "400 pellets were taken from his dead body".

Protests began on July 1, 2024 with university students calling for reforms to a quota system for public sector jobs.

Initially their demands seemed niche.

Many in the country of around 170 million people were worn down by the tough grind of economic woes.

Student ambitions to topple Hasina's iron-fisted rule seemed a fantasy, just months after she won her fourth consecutive election in a vote without genuine opposition.

One week into the demonstrations she said the students were "wasting their time".

But protests gathered pace.

Thousands launched daily blockades of roads and railways nationwide, with the gridlock bringing the demonstrations to wider attention.

A fuse was lit when police launched a deadly crackdown on July 16.

It became the catalyst for the airing of wider grievances.

Prince, now 23, a business student in the capital Dhaka, said he witnessed killings when police sought to stem protests on July 18.

As well as carrying the student's body, he helped several wounded protesters reach the hospital.

"I saw too many unidentified dead bodies in the morgue that day," said Prince, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and suffers flashbacks and mood swings.

"After that day the fight turned more personal," he said. "It was for the country."

On August 5 thousands of protesters stormed Hasina's palace as she escaped by helicopter to her old ally India.

Syeda Farhana Hossain, 49, a mother of two teenage girls, took part in the protests with them.

"This new generation proved that in times of need, they can and are willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good," she said, describing how her daughters helped paint anti-government slogans on their school walls.

"I didn't realise before the rage my children felt," she said. "It seemed like they just grew up in an instant."

But the idealism of protests has been tempered by the stark reality of the challenges Bangladesh faces.

Hasina's rule saw widespread human rights abuses and her government was accused of politicising courts and the civil service, as well as staging lopsided elections.

Caretaker leader Muhammad Yunus has said he inherited a "completely broken down" system of public administration that requires a comprehensive overhaul to prevent a return to authoritarian rule.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner scheduled elections for April 2026 but has said pushing those polls back by a few months would give more time for reforms.

"We are not on the right track yet," Hossain said.

"Whenever I see injustice or unfairness these days, I wonder: Did the students that die, die in vain?"

Tea seller Mohammad Aminul Haque, 50, said people were exhausted by intensely partisan politics that have defined Bangladesh since independence in 1971.

"The ongoing cycle of one party after another, fueling hate against each other -- we don't want this anymore," Haque said.

"What we want to see is everyone coming together for the greater good."

Yunus's government has warned that political power struggles risk jeopardising the gains that have been made.

Mohiuddin Hannan, 50, a teacher at an Islamic school, has certainly seen improvements since the last administration, which crushed Islamist parties.

"Under this government, murder, kidnapping, abductions and enforced disappearances are not happening anymore," he said.

But Hannan said there is far to go.

"It seems only the hands of power have shifted," he said.

As political parties vie for power, Prince clings to the optimism that drove the protests.

"People are more politically aware now, they raise their voice against injustice," he said.

"Whoever comes to power next will be held accountable by the public."

Abuja (AFP) – Guests poured in through an entry gate on the ground floor of a castle. Inside, vendors dressed as medieval court jesters sold balloons.

At Magicland, a privately owned theme park in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, the country's recurrent crises -- from galloping inflation to armed insurgencies -- fade into the background, at least for one afternoon.

Nigeria's fragile middle class has been battered by two years of soaring prices amid the country's worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

At Magicland, one content creator from Borno state -- where international headlines typically centre on jihadist attacks -- filmed TikTok dances as a brightly coloured big wheel towered behind her.

Others took to the carnival rides, including 26-year-old public health worker Mary Adeleke, who said she'd once been an adventurous person.

"But as I grew up, with how the country's structured and all the struggles, I lost that part of me," she said, adding she was on a quest to regain it, one roller coaster at a time.

The west African nation is, by some metrics, a success story: a tech powerhouse, a major exporter of global cultural staples like Afrobeats, and the continent's leading oil producer.

But rampant inflation, a cost of living crisis and continued insecurity have proven hard for much of the country's 228 million people.

Walking out of a swinging pendulum ride, Victor Bamidele, 28, offered a review.

"I thought it was something that would take my soul out of my body," the medical device supplier said in typically colourful Nigerian English.

"But it definitely did not," he added. "It was quite enjoyable."

Victoria Friday drove 30 minutes from Nasarawa state. She paid the 1,500 naira ($1) entry fee, but seemed less keen on buying ride tickets.

In a move relatable to budget-conscious young people the world over, the 20-year-old stylist said she "just came to snap my friend" -- taking photos for social media among the colourful backgrounds.

"Our prices are still very low," said park manager Paul Oko.

"Those who don't earn much can still come," he added, though he admitted the number of visitors has declined.

Islam Qala (Afghanistan) (AFP) – Hajjar Shademani's family waited for hours in the heat and dust after crossing the border into Afghanistan, their neat pile of suitcases all that remained of a lifetime in Iran after being deported to their homeland.

The 19-year-old and her three siblings are among tens of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the Islam Qala border point in recent days, the majority forced to leave, according to the United Nations and Taliban authorities.

Despite being born in Iran after her parents fled war 40 years ago, Shademani said the country "never accepted us". When police came to her family's home in Shiraz city and ordered them to leave, they had no choice.

But Afghanistan is also alien to her.

"We don't have anything here," she told AFP in English.

Between Iranian universities that would not accept her and the Taliban government, which has banned education for women, Shademani's studies are indefinitely on hold.

"I really love studying... I wanted to continue but in Afghanistan, I think I cannot."

At Herat province's Islam Qala crossing, the checkpoint is usually busy handling the cycle of smuggling to deportation as young men seek work in Iran.

But since Tehran ordered Afghans without the right to remain to leave by July 6, the number of returnees -- especially families -- has surged. More than 230,000 departed in June alone, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

Since January, more than 690,000 Afghans have left Iran, "70 percent of whom were forcibly sent back", IOM spokesperson Avand Azeez Agha told AFP.

Of the more than a dozen returnees AFP spoke to on Saturday, none said they had fled the recent Iran-Israel conflict, though it may have ramped up pressure. Arrests, however, had helped spur their departures.

Yadullah Alizada had only the clothes on his back and a cracked phone to call his family when he stepped off one of the many buses unloading people at the IOM-run reception centre.

The 37-year-old said he was arrested while working as a day labourer and held at a detention camp before being deported to Afghanistan.

Forced to leave without his family or belongings, he slept on a bit of cardboard at the border, determined to stay until his family could join him.

"My three kids are back there, they're all sick right now, and they don't know how to get here."

He hopes to find work in his home province of Daikundi, but in a country wracked by entrenched poverty and unemployment, he faces an uphill climb.

The UN mission for Afghanistan, UNAMA, has warned that the influx of deportees -- many arriving with "no assets, limited access to services, and no job prospects" -- risks further destabilising the crisis-wracked country.

Long lines snaked into tents encircling the reception centre where returnees accessed UN, NGO and government services.

Gusty wind whipped women's Iranian-style hijabs and young men's trendy outfits, clothing that stood out against the shalwar kameez that has become ubiquitous in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power in 2021, imposing their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi inspected the site on Saturday, striding through the crowd surrounded by a heavily armed entourage and pledging to ensure "that no Afghan citizen is denied their rights in Iran" and that seized or abandoned assets would be returned.

Taliban authorities have consistently called for "dignified" treatment of the migrants and refugees hosted in Iran and Pakistan, the latter having also ousted hundreds of thousands of Afghans since the latest decades-long war ended.

Over one million Afghans have already returned to Afghanistan this year from both neighbouring countries. The numbers are only expected to rise, even as foreign aid is slashed and the Taliban government struggles for cash and international recognition.

The IOM says it can only serve a fraction of the returnees, with four million Afghans potentially impacted by Iran's deadline.

Some of the most vulnerable pass through the agency's transit centre in Herat city, where they can get a hot meal, a night's rest and assistance on their way.

But at the clean and shaded compound, Bahara Rashidi was still worried about what would become of her and her eight sisters back in Afghanistan. They had smuggled themselves into Iran to make a living after their father died.

"There is no man in our family who can work here, and we don't have a home or money," the 19-year-old told AFP.

"We have nothing."

Evans Mwangi is one of several young Kenyans still missing since anti-government demonstrations shook the country in June and July 2024. His story captures the lingering pain that haunts many families – a reminder that while the protests transformed Kenya’s political landscape, they also left deep scars.

Every morning, Mama Evans places a plastic chair outside her mabati house in Kayole and waits. It’s the same spot where her 22-year-old son, Evans used to sit before he vanished during last year’s protests driven by Gen Z (generation of people born between 1997 - 2012).

"One year. No answers. No body. Just silence," she says, gripping a worn photograph of him in a graduation gown. "If he’s gone, let them give me his body. I just want to bury my son."

The 2024 finance bill was the spark that set off what was already an explosive social situation.

It proposed sweeping tax hikes on essential goods and digital services burdens falling squarely on a young population already grappling with unemployment and rising living costs.

By June 2024, thousands of young Kenyans, many in their early 20s, had taken to the streets, organised not by political parties or unions, but by spontaneous online coordination, carried by hashtags and influencers.

"Gen Z did what older generations feared: they called out the system with no apologies," Dr. Samora Mwaura, a youth policy expert based in Nairobi tells RFI.

"They were the heartbeat of a new kind of politics: raw, informed, and fearless."

The protests quickly spread from Nairobi to Kisumu, Eldoret, Mombasa, and Nakuru. But what began as peaceful marches soon turned deadly.

In Mathare, Kevin Otieno is learning to walk again. A year ago, the 25-year-old boda boda (motorcycle taxi) rider was caught in police crossfire on his way to make a delivery.

"They shot me in the leg. I wasn’t even part of the protest that day," he says, lifting his jeans to show the metal brace screwed into his thigh. "Since then, I’ve lost my job, my independence, and my peace."

Kevin’s story is echoed in hospitals, homes, and informal settlements across the country.

According to local human rights groups, at least 39 protesters were killed, hundreds injured, and scores went missing during the police crackdown.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights called for investigations, but prosecutions have been slow or nonexistent.

"We’ve documented arbitrary arrests, disappearances, and excessive force," says Mary Wanjiku, a legal officer. "Yet accountability remains elusive."

Despite the pain, the protests ignited something lasting. For the first time in decades, youth particularly Gen Z became a decisive force in shaping national discourse.

Their activism led to the recall of several tax proposals and forced President William Ruto’s administration into dialogue.

Politicians, once dismissive of social media activism, began hosting X (formerly Twitter) Spaces and TikTok forums to engage young voters.

"Something shifted," explains Lydia Wanjiru, a professor at the University of Nairobi. "Gen Z became both a moral and political voice. They know their power now and the country knows it too."

Grassroots movements born in the protests have since evolved into civic tech platforms, voter registration drives, and online watchdog groups. A year later, Gen Z’s presence remains visible not just in protests, but in policy.

Yet for families like Mama Evans', the political wins offer little comfort.

"People move on. But for me, every day is July 2024," she says, brushing a tear from her cheek. Her home is now a shrine of sorts Evans’ clothes folded neatly, his phone untouched, his slippers by the door.

Authorities initially promised DNA testing of unclaimed bodies at City Mortuary. She submitted samples. Months passed. Still nothing.

"Just tell me the truth. I can take it," she whispers. "This waiting is the hardest part."

Then, after a pause, her voice hardens: "For years we’ve cried for justice and they’ve given us more coffins."

As Kenya marks the one-year anniversary of the Gen Z uprising, the country stands at a crossroads. The youth movement has cracked open the political conversation but the state’s reluctance to deliver justice threatens to undo the trust it inspired.

"There can be no healing without accountability," says Dr. Mwaura. "Otherwise, we are just postponing the next eruption."

One year on, the fire has not gone out. Across Nairobi, Kisumu, and parts of the coast, small pockets of protests have flared again, this time against ongoing extrajudicial killings and police brutality, particularly in connection to the death of teacher Albert Ojwang in custody.

From placards to petitions, Kenya’s youth continue to demand an end to state violence.

Mama Evans agrees. But for now, her revolution is quiet, a candle burning next to Evans’ photo, a prayer whispered every night, a hope that somehow, one day, someone will knock on her gate with the truth.

Thekerani, Malawi – Malawi’s once-thriving banana industry is battling for survival, brought to its knees by disease outbreaks, trade disruptions and years of neglect. In the hills of Thyolo, though, a quiet resurgence is taking root.

Henderson Kopoland, 45, mainly works from his grocery shop at a small trading centre in Konzaalendo Village in Thyolo District, southern Malawi.

Visitors to this remote spot may not realise where his wealth comes from or that he runs another business far away.

About one hundred kilometres from the tarmac road lies a large plot of land about 6.5 hectares wide where green vegetation gives way to thick banana plants heavy with large bunches.

Locals often talk about how hard it used to be to reach this area.

The road, which snakes through hilly terrain, was almost impossible to pass during the rainy season, turning to mud before it was recently upgraded.

Despite its isolation, this patch of land is known across Malawi as one of the few main sources of bananas.

Before 2017, and before the new crops were planted, Kopoland’s bananas were wiped out by the banana bunchy top virus. This viral disease stunts banana plants’ growth and makes their leaves narrow and bunched.

The virus spread from the north to the rest of the country, destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmers.

In Thyolo District alone, about 4,031 hectares were used for banana farming, all of which were lost to the disease, the district’s agriculture office said.

When the government and its partners stepped in to help revive the industry, farmers got clean suckers – young offshoots used for growing new plants – to replace the infected crops.

“I was given six suckers and they multiplied to this level,” said Kopoland, pointing at his orchard. “I now have about 7,002 banana trees.

"The weather is good, as you can see. The rain is coming, and if you look at our soil, it is fine and doesn’t have sand, so it keeps moisture even when it rains lightly – to the extent that we don’t need to irrigate.”

From his banana profits, Kopoland has built a grocery shop, pays school fees for his two daughters who are in secondary school and has bought a car to help run his businesses.

He mainly grows the Williams banana variety, which was brought in after the infected plants were cleared. This variety is known for high yields and disease resistance. From a single bunch, he can earn up to MK22,000 (about €11).

“The banana production is easier compared to maize and other crops, because with maize you need fertiliser," Kopoland said.

"Yet when we plant bananas we just wait for it to grow and then we manage it, but not with much effort like maize. The future looks bright, but I have already achieved many things.”

A recent trade dispute between Malawi and Tanzania, which led to a ban on farm imports, exposed Malawi’s banana shortage.

The country depends on banana imports to meet demand, and the import ban left markets and shoppers struggling, bringing fresh focus to efforts to rebuild local production. A high-level meeting settled the trade row.

After that, the minister of trade and industry met with banana growers to discuss the problems they face and how the industry could bounce back.

Meanwhile, Nani Lazaro, Crop Protection Officer at the Thyolo District Council, told RFI that farmers still manage their crops using the training they were given.

Using what we taught them, that whenever you see that the banana is affected, you should immediately uproot those infected plants.”

He added: “For the government side, we had a programme or a project known as ASWAp (Agricultural Sector-Wide Approach). This programme contributed a lot, whereby the programme sourced the clean planting materials and distributed it to the farmers, as well as on the side of capacity building."

More farmers have now been trained on how to grow and care for bananas. NGOs like Self Help Africa also handed out clean planting material to farmers, he said.

Lazaro said many banana farmers in Thyolo have built decent houses using the money earned from their crops. More than 100,000 farmers are now growing bananas in the district.

For Kopoland, the future seems even brighter. As one of the first banana farmers in the area – and someone who pushed through the worst of the virus – he has inspired others to follow his path.

“I know almost a hundred people who joined after my success.”

Paris (AFP) – When Moscow invaded Ukraine, Pavel Talankin, a staff member at a secondary school in Russia's Ural Mountains, was ordered to film patriotic lessons, songs and morning drills.

Talankin, the school's event organiser and also a keen videographer, found the propaganda work so depressing that he wanted to quit his job in the industrial town of Karabash.

Then he received what he says was the strangest message of his life.

A Europe-based filmmaker got in touch, offering to collaborate on a project to document the abrupt militarisation of Talankin's school in the wake of Russia's February 2022 invasion of its neighbour.

Talankin had earlier seen a post from a Russian company looking for people whose jobs had been affected by the war. Talankin said he was ready to talk.

After receiving the foreigner's offer Talankin did not sleep all night.

The project changed his life forever.

After teaming up with David Borenstein and shooting many hours of footage, Talankin last summer fled Russia with seven hard discs, leaving behind his mother, brothers and sisters and the town he loved.

Using the smuggled-out footage Borenstein, a Denmark-based US filmmaker, directed what became "Mr Nobody Against Putin", an award-winning 90-minute documentary which exposes the intensity of the propaganda at Talankin's school and throughout Karabash.

It premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January.

The project cost Talankin dearly. Local officials banned his former colleagues from contacting him, he became a hate figure for supporters of the war and his school librarian mother was upset.

"I have become a persona non grata," Talankin, 34, told AFP from Prague, where he is now based.

Russia outlawed all criticism of the Russian military and the Kremlin and Talankin knew he had taken huge risks.

But he has no regrets.

"I would do it all over again."

He has been buoyed by the support of people featured in the film including those who lost their loved ones in the war.

One former colleague said she became ashamed that she, too, was "part of the system."

The documentary reaped awards at festivals and the film crew hopes it will be available to wider audiences in Europe later this year. Borenstein said the film's success had been a "relief" because the multi-national crew overcame numerous obstacles including communication and security.

But above all he was "really scared" that if the film flopped Talankin's sacrifice would come to nothing.

"I knew the whole time that Pasha would have to leave Russia to make this project happen," Borenstein told AFP, referring to his co-director by his diminutive.

"That is a huge sacrifice for him, because his mum is there, his whole life is there, he does not speak English, not at that time."

Talankin has not been able to join the crew to present the film at the Sundance festival in Utah and elsewhere due to paperwork issues, but the team hopes this will soon change.

For now he is learning English and adjusting to his new life in Prague.

Talankin said he was heartened by the reactions at the screenings.

One viewer in the Czech Republic said he hated Russians but the film made him reconsider. "We knew nothing about what was happening to you," Talankin quoted the Czech as saying.

"It is a powerful and poetic piece of cinema," said producer Alexandra Fechner, who is promoting the film in France.

"This film shows the hidden side of propaganda in Russia, which targets the youngest members of society, children who are being taught a rewritten version of history and given guns!" she said.

With the war in its fourth year, Moscow has put society on a war footing and leveraged the educational system to raise a fiercely pro-Kremlin generation.

The film features Wagner mercenaries telling children about hand grenades and teachers calling Ukrainians "neo-Nazi", and includes an audio recording of a wailing mother at her soldier son's funeral.

But critics also point to the documentary's empathy and light touch.

In one episode, a history teacher tells pupils that the spiralling prices could soon make gas unaffordable for Europeans.

"The French will soon be like musketeers, riding horses, and the rest of Europe too," he said.

Borenstein said that by viewing the footage sent by Talankin nearly every day, he understood the effect of the dehumanising war-time propaganda.

While at the beginning he found some of the clips shocking, months later his mind had become so used to the onslaught of the propaganda that he did not see the footage depicting the Wagner mercenaries as something abnormal.

"I was able to replicate among myself some of the feelings that maybe the students and people in the school felt," he said. "Looking at this propaganda every single day was a lesson in how desensitised you can become to it."

A lot of the footage had not made it into the film, including the school's preparations for the possibility of a nuclear attack.

Karabash is located close to one of Russia's most sensitive sites, the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant.

Talankin said Borenstein did not want the viewers to "drown in the enormous amount of negative material."

"I have plans for this footage," Talankin said. "Sooner or later I will start slowly releasing it."

Lahore (Pakistan) (AFP) – While conflict raged between the powerful militaries of India and Pakistan, a battle was also fought on the cultural front lines despite years of shared love for films and music.

The deadly fighting in early May -- the worst in decades -- affected artists previously untouched by animosity between their leaders.

Ali Gul Pir, a Pakistani rapper and comedian with a huge Indian following, released a song years ago mocking Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While he was spared consequences then, in May his YouTube channel and Instagram profile were blocked in India.

"Indians now recognise that the digital space serves as a bridge between Pakistanis and Indians, and they seem intent on severing that connection," Pir told AFP.

The collapse in bilateral relations was caused by a deadly April attack on tourists in India-administered Kashmir, which New Delhi blamed on Islamabad.

Pakistan denied the allegation and, after tit-for-tat diplomatic retaliation, their militaries fought for four days before a ceasefire was reached.

The conflict hit the music industry for the first time, with Pakistani singer Annural Khalid also remembering how her Indian following dropped off.

"Delhi was my top listening city before the ban," said Khalid, who has 3.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

"I suffered a great loss in the audience" from India, she told AFP.

"Listeners were deprived of content because music was turned into something it is not," Khalid added.

The conflict also scrubbed out some prior exchanges, such as the soundtrack of the 2017 film "Raees" on Spotify in India.

It now shows only Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan, without his Pakistani co-star Mahira Khan.

With Pakistan producing just a handful of movies each year under strict censorship rules, Bollywood has always proven popular among viewers.

"I grew up watching Bollywood. We have the same traumas, we have the same history, we have the same stories," said Pakistani film critic Sajeer Shaikh.

Pakistani actors and directors have for decades seen making it to Bollywood as the ultimate recognition.

But this month, Indian star Diljit Dosanjh announced his latest movie, "Sardaar Ji 3", which features four Pakistani actors, would be released "overseas only", after New Delhi banned Pakistani content and artists from productions.

"Abir Gulaal", a love story starring Pakistan's Fawad Khan and Indian actor Vaani Kapoor, was scheduled to hit Indian cinemas on May 9 but the release was postponed.

Even some in the industry who had previously backed the cross-border artistic trade changed their tune last month.

"Everything should be banned... cricket, films, everything," said Indian actor Suniel Shetty, who has a big fan following in Pakistan.

He starred in the 2004 movie "Main Hoon Na", which subtly promotes peace between India and Pakistan.

"It's something really unfortunate about politics, creating that rift and putting boundaries around art," said Dua Zahra, assistant manager at Warner Bros South Asia's music label in Pakistan.

As part of its measures in the wake of the Kashmir attack, New Delhi's ban on some Pakistani YouTube channels included private broadcaster HUM TV.

The channel, which says around 40 percent of its viewers are from India, simply told its fans to use a VPN to continue watching.

Since Modi took office more than a decade ago, many Indian critics and filmmakers have warned that Bollywood is now increasingly promoting his government's Hindu nationalist ideology.

While the conflict has created divisions on the cultural scene, there are signs that the trade will endure.

Over a month after the ceasefire, three Indian films were in the top 10 on Netflix Pakistan, while the top 20 trending songs in India included two Pakistani tracks.

Pir, the rapper and comedian, vowed to "bridge gaps".

"Let's not make war, let's just make art," he said.

"Let's just not bomb each other."

Abuja (AFP) – The first strikes in Dambe are thrown before the boxers even leave their house.

Fighters don charms and amulets, dye their fist or even score their arm with a razor, inserting traditional medicine before it scars over -- all guaranteed to protect them in the ring or deliver a knock-out punch.

Combined with prayers from "mallams", or spiritual guides, they are unstoppable -- not just in Nigeria, but increasingly around the world.

The Dambe World Series kicked off in Abuja, the capital, on Saturday in the latest evolution of a sport that traces its roots back centuries among west Africa's Hausa speakers.

"Instead of trying to Westernise it, or instead of trying to make it something else, for us the goal is to professionalise it," said Maxwell Kalu, founder of the West African Fighting Championship, the group organising the tournament.

At the same time, a key goal is also "opening the door in terms of inviting people to compete in Nigeria".

Held on the ground of the national stadium and broadcast by DAZN, a British sports streaming service, the tournament is a far cry from the social tradition said to have been organised by 10th-century Hausa butchers.

"This one is big, I'm very happy," said Abdullahi "Coronavirus" Ali, a 20-year-old who has been fighting since he was a child. "The audience is growing every day."

As Coronavirus -- nicknamed so for his ferocious punches -- spoke to AFP, two amateur fighters worked the ring behind him, in a pre-tournament exhibition match in Dei Dei, a working-class Abuja exurb.

Chickens pecked under the rickety wooden stands while cigarette smoke wafted above the crowd.

In Dambe, in lieu of a glove, the fighters each have one fist tightly bound in rope -- their striking arm. The other hand reaches out, feeling the space between the opponents and looking for something to grab or parry before the fighting arm whips forward as if from a loaded spring.

Amid the blows, one fighter lost his balance and fell -- a "kill". The round was over.

Dambe might have once seemed destined to be confined to the margins in places like Dei Dei as Abuja's elite paved over anything standing in the way of modern skyscrapers and highways.

Slowly, the government has taken more interest in preserving and promoting the sport, as have private groups like the WAFC.

With the advent of YouTube and Instagram, Dambe now attracts fans across the world, with one promoter telling BBC in 2017 that 60 percent of his viewers were from outside Nigeria.

The sport has also grown at home.

In 2018, a Dambe match in the southern city of Lagos drew in spectators curious about their northern countrymen's pastime -- and excited to see it in a proper stadium.

Earlier this month, athletes from across the continent descended on the megacity for the African Knockout Championship, a Western-style mixed martial arts tournament.

But Kalu envisions the opposite: foreigners making their way to witness a distinctively Nigerian way of fighting.

Professionalisation also brings the opportunity to bring in safety protocols and stable salaries to the otherwise unregulated combat sport.

"If I get married, I won't allow my children to do it," said Usman Abubakar, 20, his fist dyed a dark henna colour and arm replete with charmed scars, recalling an injury to the chest that saw him sit out for two years.

Saturday's fighters will be competing to represent Nigeria in what is envisioned as a multi-stage, international series.

Last year, supported by the WAFC, British national Luke Leyland travelled from Liverpool to compete in a Dambe match -- reportedly the first white fighter to ever do so.

He was "destroyed", according to one local media report, though he wrote positively of the experience.

Nigerian fighters remain cool on the idea of sharing the spoils of victory.

Asked what would happen if non-Nigerians started competing, "Coronavirus", Abubakar and a third fighter, Anas Hamisu, were all excited at the prospect of more people embracing their sport.

But they also all shared the same prediction: the Nigerians would win.

Tiflet (Morocco) (AFP) – Moroccan student Said Rifai, 15, is on a mission to help his peers pursue education in a country where an estimated 270,000 children drop out of school each year.

"We must help them come back," said Rifai, who goes to middle school in Tiflet, a town east of the capital Rabat, and has already helped several of his friends back to school as part of a national youth-led effort.

To tackle the problem, which educators and officials warn exacerbates social inequalities and drives poverty, Moroccan authorities offer dropouts a chance back in with support from fellow students.

One of Rifai's classmates, Doha El Ghazouli, who is also 15, said that together they had helped several friends return to school "before they abandoned their future".

Huda Enebcha, 16, told AFP how she and her friend Ghazouli managed to convince a neighbour to resume her studies.

"We helped her review the most difficult subjects, and we showed her videos of some school activities", said Enebcha.

"She finally agreed after a lot of effort."

To ease the transition back into the education system, the "second chance school" scheme offers some teenagers vocational training alongside remedial classes, with an emphasis on giving former dropouts agency and choice.

Hssain Oujour, who leads the national programme, said 70 percent of the teenagers enrolled in it have taken up vocational training that could help them enter the labour force, with another 20 percent returning to the traditional school system.

Across Morocco, a country of 37 million people, classrooms are often overcrowded, and the public education system is generally viewed as inferior to private institutions, which charge fees that can be prohibitive for many families.

Around 250 million children worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and in Morocco, nearly one in four inhabitants -- around nine million people -- are illiterate, according to the UN children's agency UNICEF.

Dropout rates tend to be higher in rural and impoverished areas, said Said Tamouh, the principal of the Jawhara School in Tiflet that the students interviewed by AFP attend.

An NGO-run "second chance school" nearby has some 110 students, who can sign up for art classes, hairdressing training or classical Arabic language courses.

Sanae Sami, 17, who took up a make-up class, said she was "truly" given another shot at pursuing education.

"When you leave school, there's nothing for you," she said.

"That's why I decided to come back, especially thanks to the teachers at this centre."

Hafida El Fakir, who heads the Salam association which runs the school, said that "support and guidance" were key in helping students "succeed and go far".

Amine Othmane, a student who had re-entered the system last year with encouragement from his friends, is now helping others.

To convince dropouts, he said, "they first have to regret leaving and want to return".

Back in school, 18-year-old Aya Benzaki now hopes to achieve her dream of graduating with a diploma, and Jihane Errafii, 17, said she was grateful for the friends who had supported her journey.

"I just needed someone to lend me a hand."

Maracaibo (Venezuela) (AFP) – In Venezuela's oil capital of Maracaibo, a drilling frenzy has led to dozens of new wells -- but the valuable liquid being pumped out is just water, not petroleum.

In a symbol of the woes of Venezuela's crumbling economy, the once flourishing oil town of 2 million people is parched.

Experts blame the nationwide shortage of drinking water on corruption and years of underinvestment and mismanagement by national and local governments, resulting in frequent water cuts.

The corroding infrastructure has led to schools, homes, businesses, churches and health centers all digging their own wells -- at a huge expense.

A private well costs between $1,000 and $6,000, a fortune in the sanctions-hit Caribbean country where the minimum monthly wage is around $200.

As a result, homes that come with a ready-made well and generator -- Venezuelans also live with recurring power cuts -- sell for a premium.

While water rationing has been in place in Venezuelan cities for years, the situation in Maracaibo has become critical, as pumping stations break down, old pipes leak and reservoirs run dry.

No water came out of the taps in certain parts of the city for over a month at the start of 2025.

Manuel Palmar and six other families in the lower-middle-class neighborhood of Ziruma saw the writing on the wall four years ago.

They each paid $2,500 to build a 12-meter-deep (40-foot) well, which can store up to about 80,000 liters (21,000 gallons) of spring water each week.

Now when Palmar turns on the tap, water gushes out for free.

The water is not fit for drinking due to its high salinity -- saltwater from the Caribbean Sea seeps into Lake Maracaibo, a coastal lake used as a freshwater source -- but "it's perfect for washing clothes and flushing toilets," he explained.

"It's a blessing!" the 34-year-old accountant said.

There's a solution of sorts for every budget.

Some residents fill 200-liter drums at official filling stations or communal taps for $2-$3.

Others order a water truck to fill their building's tank for between $40 and $60.

Some even recycle the water produced by the tropical city's ubiquitous air conditioners or collect rainwater.

But those are all quick fixes.

Over the past six years, more and more residents have begun digging wells to guarantee their long-term supply for the future.

Gabriel Delgado has built about 20 wells in Maracaibo, including at a heart disease clinic and four private schools.

He also built one at his mother-in-law's home: a gray cement cylinder, one and a half meters in diameter, buried under metal sheeting and rocks.

Cobwebs dangle just above the water level, but as soon as he activates the pump, water pours forth.

It's crystal clear, unlike the yellowish liquid that flows from the city's taps during the rainy season, and Delgado eagerly sips it.

Venezuelans must receive authorization from health and environmental authorities before drilling a well, and they are required to provide water samples for testing to ensure it is fit for consumption once it's built.

But not everyone bothers.

Javier Otero, head of Maracaibo's municipal water department, told AFP that he had come across shallow artisanal wells built near sewers or polluted ravines.

"Some people drink water that is not potable, that is brackish," he told AFP.

The municipality has built seven wells to supply Maracaibo's poorer neighborhoods.

Ras Angela (Tunisia) (AFP) – Nemcha, Zina and Zouina, three North African Sloughi hounds, play on the beach in Tunisia where their ancestors have long roamed desert plains, seemingly unaware of the existential threat to their dwindling breed.

The Sloughis, known for their speed and slender physique, have for many centuries accompanied nomadic societies across North Africa, and have been featured in art and lore dating back at least to the Roman era.

But nowadays breeders and advocates say that unregulated crossbreeding, the decline of nomadic lifestyles and habitat shifts due to urbanisation mean that they might soon disappear.

Olfa Abid, who was walking Nemcha, Zina and Zouina along the coast in northern Tunisia's Ras Angela, said the age-old breed is "part of our heritage, our history".

"We must protect the Sloughi," said Abid, a 49-year-old veterinarian, her arms wrapped around one of her dogs.

Recent years have seen a spike in unregulated crossbreeding, mixing the local Sloughi with other hounds often brought in from abroad to boost its speed for dog races, according to Abid.

National kennel club the Tunisian Canine Centre (CCT) has been working to raise awareness and safeguard the breed, including by creating a dedicated registry with a regulated breeding scheme.

The organisation's director Noureddine Ben Chehida said it also seeks to have the Tunisian Sloughi "recognised according to international standards" as a unique breed, under the guidelines of the International Canine Federation, the world's main dog breed registry.

Such recognition would give the local Sloughi population a place on the international stage and help preserve its lineage at home, Ben Chehida said.

Also known as Arabian Greyhounds, today the CCT estimates that fewer than 200 pure-bred Sloughis remain in Tunisia.

With their short coats in sandy hues or grey and arched backs, the hounds' swift gait has earned them a precious spot in Tunisian folklore even as the desert life they once supported gradually vanishes.

Historians debate how they first made it to this part of North Africa, but many attribute their arrival to nomadic tribes like the Mrazigs who live in the south of modern-day Tunisia.

For centuries, or possibly even millennia, the Sloughis have been vital companions to desert nomads, helping them hunt and guard livestock.

"Running like a Sloughi" is still a common saying in Tunisia.

"It's a noble dog that was the pride of its nomadic owners," said Abid. "It's a primitive hunter with a purpose when food was scarce."

She said the Sloughi has also had a more privileged standing compared to most dogs that are generally considered impure in Islamic cultures.

Unlike other breeds, Sloughis have traditionally been allowed indoors and would even eat beside their owners, said Abid.

In the southern town of Douz, on the edge of the Sahara desert, dog breeder Nabil Marzougui said the "proliferation of hybrid breeds" is putting the Sloughis' future at risk.

"We inherited this dog from our forefathers," said Marzougui, calling for authorities to intervene to save the Sloughis as well as the ancestral tradition that they embody.

The hounds require ample daily exercise, especially where hunting is no longer available or needed.

This is why Abid said she had left the city to settle in the quiet coastal village of Ras Angela, on Africa's northernmost tip, where long stretches of sand serve as an ideal terrain for her three dogs to run around and roam free.

Their seaside adventures, which Abid shares on social media, are now followed by thousands of people online.

Hatem Bessrour, a 30-year-old agricultural engineer and the proud owner of a Sloughi named Cacahuete, called on fellow dog owners to register their pure-bred hounds with the national canine centre to support its breeding programme.

The breed is part Tunisia's heritage, he said. "We must care for it just like we care for antiquities and archaeological sites."

Damascus (AFP) – Rival Syrian and Kurdish producers are scrambling for shrinking wheat harvests as the worst drought in decades follows a devastating war, pushing more than 16 million people toward food insecurity.

"The country has not seen such bad climate conditions in 60 years," said Haya Abu Assaf, assistant to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Syria.

Syria's water levels have seen "a very significant drop compared to previous years, which is very worrying", Abu Assaf told AFP, as a relatively short winter rainy season and decreased rainfall take their toll.

"A gap of between 2.5 to 2.7 million tonnes in the wheat crop is expected, meaning that the wheat quantity will not be sufficient to meet local needs," Abu Assaf said, putting "around 16.3 million people at risk of food insecurity in Syria this year".

Before the civil war erupted in 2011, Syria was self-sufficient in wheat, producing an average of 4.1 million tonnes annually.

Nearly 14 years of conflict have since crippled production and devastated the economy.

The FAO estimates that harsh weather has impacted nearly 2.5 million hectares of wheat-growing land.

"Around 75 percent of the cultivated areas" have been affected, as well as "natural pastures for livestock production", said Abu Assaf.

To bridge the wheat gap, imports would be essential in a country where around 90 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Before his ouster in an Islamist-led offensive in December, Syria's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad used to rely on ally Russia for wheat.

In April, new authorities reported the first wheat shipment since his removal arrived in Latakia port, with more Russian shipments following.

Iraq also donated more than 220,000 tonnes of wheat to Syria.

During the war, Damascus competed with the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast to buy wheat from farmers across fertile lands.

Last year, Assad's government priced wheat at $350 per tonne, and the Kurds at $310.

After Assad's ouster, Damascus and the Kurds agreed in March to integrate Kurdish-led institutions into the new Syrian state, with negotiations ongoing on implementation.

Damascus set wheat prices this month at between $290 and $320 per tonne, depending on the quality, plus a $130 bonus.

The Kurdish-led administration offered $420 per tonne including a $70 bonus.

Damascus' agriculture ministry expects a harvest of 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes in government-controlled areas this year.

Hassan Othman, director of the Syrian Grain Establishment, acknowledged Syria was not self-sufficient, in comments on state television.

But he said authorities were working "to ensure food security by importing wheat from abroad and milling it in our mills".

In northeast Syria's Amuda, farmer Jamshid Hassu, 65, inspected the tiny wheat grains from his fields, which cover around 200 hectares (around 500 acres).

Despite heavy irrigation efforts to offset scarce rainfall, he said, production has halved.

The FAO's Abu Assaf said indicators showed that "about 95 percent of rain-fed wheat has been damaged and affected", while irrigated wheat yields were down 30 to 40 percent.

Hassu, who has been farming for four decades, said he had to pump water from depths of more than 160 metres (525 feet) to sustain his crops as groundwater levels plunge.

Agriculture remains a vital income source in rural Syria, but without urgent support, farmers face ruin.

"Without support, we will not be able to continue," Hassu warned.

"People will suffer from poverty and hunger."

Kuhmo (Finland) (AFP) – In a Finnish town a stone's throw from Russia, Moscow's reported military build-up on its side of the border is raising concerns about the Nordic country's security, locals told AFP.

Kuhmo (Finland) (AFP) – In a Finnish town a stone's throw from Russia, Moscow's reported military build-up on its side of the border is raising concerns about the Nordic country's security, locals told AFP.

Finland, which dropped decades of military non-alignment to join NATO in 2023, shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia.

Recent satellite images obtained by media outlets including the New York Times, Finnish public broadcaster Yle and Swedish broadcaster SVT have revealed an expansion of Russian military infrastructure in various locations near the Finnish border.

Speculation is rife that Russia could be preparing for future military action against Finland once its war in Ukraine is over.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Finland of repercussions since it joined NATO after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"We have now noticed some new organisational changes, such as new divisions which are beginning to appear near Finland's borders," military expert Emil Kastehelmi, of Finland-based Black Bird Group which analyses Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Russian forces near NATO's eastern border, told AFP.

"Russia continues to build, prepare and train in the vicinity of Finland's and NATO's eastern border," he said.

Kastehelmi said the Russian activity was a reaction to Finland's NATO accession, as well as an attempt to step up recruitment of soldiers and a result of the re-establishment of the Leningrad Military District near the border last year.

In May, the Finnish Defence Forces told AFP that "Russia is building more infrastructure to be able to bring in more troops after the war (in Ukraine) is over".

Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen told AFP that Helsinki was "closely monitoring and assessing Russia's activities and intentions" together with its allies.

In the small border town of Kuhmo, around 600 kilometres north of Helsinki, 49-year-old Samuli Pulkkinen was selling seasonal berries and vegetables outside a grocery store.

He said locals were increasingly worried about another war with Russia -- the last one, in 1939-1940, saw Finland cede 11 percent of its territory.

"After a long period of peace, everyone is of course now talking about war and the threat of war," Pulkkinen told AFP.

"It's really sad that it's as if this time of peace is already over, that there is a constant threat that something bad will happen or will happen in the next few years."

"I myself think it's very likely," he added ominously.

Kuhmo, with a population of less than 10,000, is located some 60 kilometres from the closed Vartius border crossing.

The proximity to Russia has always influenced Finland's eastern border regions.

Many locals have family on both sides of the border, and tourism and cross-border trade were important sources of income before 2022.

"I'm not worrying too much, because living with fear is challenging in one's daily life," said a 67-year-old man who asked to remain anonymous.

"But thinking about the future generations, children and grandchildren, I worry about their future."

Finland is building a 200-kilometre border fence aimed at preventing Russia from "instrumentalising migrants" across its border to destabilise Finland.

The Nordic country shut its border with Russia in December 2023 until further notice, after the arrival of around 1,000 migrants without visas. Helsinki said the surge was orchestrated by Russia -- a claim Moscow denied.

Tomi Tirkkonen, deputy commander of the Kainuu border guard district which includes Kuhmo, said the border guard was monitoring activity along the eastern border on a daily basis, and was "very well updated about the situation on the Russian side."

"There is no reason to be scared, the situation is completely under the control of the Finnish border guard," he told AFP during a visit to the Vartius border crossing, located amidst lush forest.

"We are prepared for the many different kinds of scenarios," Tirkkonen said, unable to divulge "operational and classified" details.

Finland has beefed up its military investments and preparedness since joining NATO, and has urged citizens to increase their civil preparedness.

The Nordic country backs NATO's five percent spending target and has launched a reform of its defence forces to tackle the security threat.

Pirjo Rasinkangas, who was visiting relatives in Kuhmo, said she supported Finland's decision to shut the border and build the border fence, saying it gave her a "sense of safety".

"I am still trying to be a bit positive and think that it won't get worse at least," she said.

"Of course we discuss what comes next with my family. Because it feels like there are such bleak prospects cropping up all the time," the 54-year-old added.

Analyst Kastehelmi said the increased Russian military activity posed no immediate threat to Finland's security nor indicated Russia was preparing a military attack.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb assured in a CNN interview in May that Russia's military bases along the border were nothing new and "there is a normal build-up" of troops there.

"The most important question is what happens when the war in Ukraine ends," Kastehelmi said.

"It (would be) a very worrying sign if, for example, Russia doesn't discharge or demobilise soldiers after the active military operations in Ukraine end."

Bangkok (AFP) – While looking for jobs on Facebook, Jett thought he had found a well-paying opportunity working in online customer service in his home country of Thailand.

Following instructions to travel across the kingdom, the 18-year-old ended up being trafficked across the border to a compound in Svay Rieng, Cambodia.

There Jett was beaten, tortured and forced to perpetrate cyberscams, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry that has defrauded victims around the world.

He was forcibly held at the compound for seven months, during which "there was no monetary compensation, and contacting family for help was not an option", he told AFP.

"Will I survive, or will I die?" Jett (a pseudonym to protect his identity) recalled asking himself.

Abuses in Cambodia's scam centres are happening on a "mass scale", a report published Thursday by Amnesty International said, accusing the Cambodian government of being "acquiescent" and "complicit" in the exploitation of thousands of workers.

The report says there are at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia, clustered mostly around border areas, in which organised criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labour, child labour, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery.

Amnesty's Montse Ferrer said that despite law enforcement raids on some scam compounds, the number of compounds in Cambodia has increased, "growing and building" in the last few months and years.

"Scamming compounds are allowed to thrive and flourish by the Cambodian government," she told AFP.

The Cambodian government has denied the allegations.

Jett was made to romance his wealthy, middle-aged compatriots on social media, gaining their trust until they could be tricked into investing in a fake business.

"If the target fell into the trap, they would be lured to keep investing more until they were financially drained -- selling their land, cars, or all their assets," he said.

Scam bosses demanded exorbitant targets of one million baht ($31,000) per month from overworked employees –- a target only about two percent of them reached, he said.

"Initially, new recruits wouldn't face physical harm, but later, reprimands escalated to beatings, electric shocks, and severe intimidation," Jett told AFP.

The other employees in his multi-storey building were mostly Chinese, with some Vietnamese and some Thais.

Amnesty International says none of the ex-scammers of the 58 they interviewed for the report were Cambodian, and "overwhelmingly" were not paid for their labour.

Most of the scam centre bosses were Chinese, Jett said, adding that they used Thai interpreters when meting out punishments to those who performed poorly.

"Sometimes they'd hold meetings to decide who would be eliminated tomorrow," he said. "Or who will be sold (to another scam compound)? Or did anyone do something wrong that day? Did they break the company rules?"

He claims a colleague falsely accused him of wrongdoing to the Chinese bosses for a bounty. He pleaded his innocence but they "just didn't listen".

Ferrer said Cambodian government interventions against the scam centres had been "woefully ineffective", often linked to corruption by individual police officers at a "systemic and widespread level".

Government spokesman Pen Bona told AFP: "Cambodia is a victimised country used by criminals to commit online scams. We do recognise that there is such thing, but Cambodia has taken serious measures against the problem."

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in April that the scam industry was expanding outside hotspots in Southeast Asia, with criminal gangs building up operations as far as South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands.

In Cambodia, Jett ultimately staged a dramatic escape after a particularly severe beating in which his arm was broken. He jumped out of a building, passed out and later woke up in hospital.

"Whether I died or survived, both options seemed good to me at the time," he said. "Consider it a blessing that I jumped."

He is now seeking legal recourse with assistance from Thai government agencies who have categorised him as a victim of human trafficking.

But Ferrer said effective action to help end the industry must come from the Cambodian government.

"We are convinced that if the Cambodian government wanted to put a stop they would be able to put a stop. At the very least they would be able to do much more than what we're seeing," she said.