Cosmas Maduka is a man who knows a thing or two about overcoming adversity.
By the age of six, Maduka had survived bombs and bullets. It was in the dark depths of that civil war over the failed secession of Biafra – a civil war that saw 30,000 dead and more than a million refugees. His home state of Anambra was right in the thick of it; it was the base for relief flights to the beleaguered Biafran population. This drew airstrikes by Nigerian warplanes.
“We had a bunker outside our house which we ran into during times where the military opened fire and dropped bombs with their fighter jets. We did not know whether we were going to survive to see the following day,” says Maduka.
One day, as the young Maduka walked to the market, soldiers opened fire, killing scores of civilians. Again, Maduka was lucky to escape with his life. Soon afterwards his mother sent him away to safety to live with his grandparents.
In these tough early years, Maduka had no idea who his father was until the day he was led to his funeral.
“The best I knew of my father was the day I saw a man lying lifelessly in a suit… It was like a festival, people were exceptionally kind to me that day and whatever I asked for, I got,” he says.
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The sad celebrations faded into struggle and grinding poverty. Maduka became a street hawker to provide for his family. Every morning, at 5AM, Maduka would wake up to sell bean cakes on the streets with his older brother, Pius, to feed his family.
In a small step up from street life, Maduka began life as a lowly apprentice in his uncle’s motorcycle business. It was a sour first taste of the motor industry that was to make his millions decades later.
The motorcycle workshop job was poorly paid and after seven years of service his uncle fired him – the severance package was less than $400. In these difficult times, Maduka hugged to his heart two guiding principles.
“Firstly, no matter how careful you are things are always going to happen that you never anticipated. The second lesson is don’t ever take a risk you cannot discount.”
Both principles were the rich harvest of a bitter and expensive worst day that will forever haunt Maduka.
“Sometime in 2011, I was sitting in the office and my phone rang, it was a kid brother from my state who was in the oil business who said he wanted me to assist him. He had some difficulties in raising money for a project. I tried to talk to him and counsel him and at the end of the day he convinced me to come and see what he was doing,” says Maduka.
“I went with my wife and I was fascinated looking at how far he had built his business. He was looking for a line of credit. I was sitting in two publicly quoted banks owning about 70 percent equity in one of them. I tried to get the bank to support him but they refused, so I said I would guarantee the transaction. I told the bank to put the credit under my name and I parted with over $300 million.”
The approach came from Ifeanyi Ubah, the CEO of Capital Oil and gas, for a loan to import petroleum premium spirit. Maduka took a calculated risk.
“We did things systematically. The first consignment came and within 45 days we cleared the shipment. We did it for the second one too and that went well but I didn’t know he was goading me. Before December 2011, he came with six documents saying if I did this for him he would be eternally grateful. We had done several transactions and they were all successful, timely and he paid at the correct time so I had no issues.”
Maduka opened a line of credit to guarantee the loan for Ubah to secure his goods for the six consignments but, to his horror, the goods never arrived in Nigeria.
“The guy went abroad and connived with the shipping company and sold the vessel offshore. Every month interest of N300 million ($972,000) was dropping into my account,” says Maduka.
He was left liable and had to sell his entire stake in one of the financial institutions, where he was a director and had a controlling share, to pay off that debt.
“My franchise was threatened because this was not something we planned for. That is why when we talk about success, you can never be complacent and say that you have arrived because there are always obstacles you meet along the way. An entrepreneur must continue to reinvest into his business and keep reserve capital because there are shocks that you are going to meet that you never anticipated,” he says.
Today, Maduka is the President and Chairman of Coscharis Group, franchise holders of over eight luxury automobile brands and one of the largest distributors of spare car parts in Nigeria. The company also has interests in real estate, banking, technology, medical equipment, petrochemicals, elevators and agriculture. He stresses the importance of trust and loyalty to his 300 staff. Clearly, he doesn’t want them to suffer as he did in the motorcycle repair shop a lifetime ago.
The lessons from his worst day also led to a wiser, more cautious Maduka whose mantra today is never take anyone at face value.

A Mistake  That Cost  A Million  A Month

On a warm Johannesburg afternoon, in stoops the millionaire African author who wears his eminence, as well as his shoes, lightly. The laces on his shoes are undone as he walks in with his fourth wife Mokhiniso Rakhimova, 39 years his junior, at his side.
This is Wilbur Smith, one of the world’s best known novelists, who writes about Africa’s elephants, poachers, soldiers, mercenaries and leaders. He says the most treasured advice he got from his publisher was “write only about those things that you know well” and since then he has been writing about Africa where he was born and bred.
Readers have devoured his 38 books in aeroplanes, hotel rooms and trains, from New York to London. He has sold more than 120 million copies; that is the equivalent of eight copies each for every man, woman and child in the country of his birth – Zambia. Half a century of prolific writing, but it could have been one of the shortest stories told.
<div id="attachment_4464" style="width: 222px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4464" class="size-medium wp-image-4464" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-80747058-212x300.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="300" />Literature, Personalities, pic: February 1964, Rhodesian born author Wilbur Smith pictured with his first book &#8220;When The Lion Feeds&#8221; (Photo by Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images)</div>
In his first few months of life in Zambia, where he was born to his metalworker father, in Kabwe in Zambia’s copper belt, the doctor told his parents that the small child would be better off dead. Smith was diagnosed with cerebral malaria. The doctor warned that if the child survived he would be brain damaged.
Smith made a miraculous recovery to be a prolific novelist. He married four times and divorced twice. The third wife died from brain cancer in 1999.
His stepson from a previous marriage dragged him to court for his assets and they’ve been foes ever since. Even worse, three of his own children have abandoned him after quarrels.
His novels are divided into three series: The Courtney; The Ballantyne and The Ancient Egypt.
The 84-year-old Smith returned to his Ancient Egypt series with his new novel, Pharaoh, transporting you to a time of threat, blood and glory.
Smith’s breakthrough was 54 years ago, after the success of his first book, When the Lion Feeds, which saw him receive a film contract. But it was banned in apartheid South Africa on the grounds of ‘obscenity’ for mixed-race relationships and blasphemy.
Smith was schooled in Michaelhouse, in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, where he started the school’s newspaper.
In 1954, he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Rhodes University before working for his father’s cattle ranch as a chartered accountant. But his real love was reading and writing books.
He credits his mother for reading him bedtime stories every night.
“Before I could read she taught me to revere books and the written word. Through her influence I became a reader at a precociously young age. I started with ‘Biggles’ and ‘Just William’. Pretty soon I moved on to the novels of C.S. Forester, Rider Haggard and John Buchan. From then onwards I always had a well-thumbed book in my pocket,” he says in his biography.
His father, as well as the mosquitos, was against him being an author.
“He felt that my obsession with books was unnatural and unhealthy. I was forced to become a secret reader. I spent so much time in the outhouse long-drop latrine, where I kept a cache of my favorite books, that my father ordered my mother to administer regular and copious doses of castor oil.”
Pharaoh is part of a six-book deal, worth £15 million ($18.6 million), signed in 2012. Unusually, they will all be written with the help of co-authors.

The Multi-Million-Dollar Author Who Defied Death

It is not often that a jovial call from an old friend in the African night brings back chilling memories of brutality that could have shamed the devil. It came from Washington; from fellow journalist Ray Choto – a man who was prepared to die, at the hands of his own people in his own land, to protect his sources. The kind of journalist everyone should want to be.
The unexpected call sent my mind racing back to January 1999 and nine days of sun and torrential rain that dripped with dark deeds.
Choto and Mark Chavunduka wrote a story for their newspaper, the Sunday Standard in Harare, claiming that there had been a coup attempt. Senior military sources told them that 23 soldiers, including seven officers, were under lock and key.
The government was enraged but, instead of refuting it, or writing a lawyer’s letter to the Standard, sent soldiers to clap Choto and Chavunduka in handcuffs and leg irons. They were kept for what Choto called “nine days of hell”.  Soldiers stripped them, blindfolded them, beat them with planks, kicked them in the kidneys and shoved their heads in drums of water.
For days we pumped out the story, day and night from Harare and pestered the authorities. What makes me sick to my stomach is that everyone in power knew where the two were, but no one had to guts to leak it. It sticks in my craw even more that if the journalists had been from the United States or Europe the story would have been at the top of world news and the battered young men would have been out before the sun went down.
Instead it was more than a week before we set eyes on Choto and Chavunduka; even then they were still in custody in the Magistrates’ Court. They were charged with an old colonial law, the Law and Order Maintenance Act, and released on bail. I can still see Chavunduka smiling as he saw me striding into the court on that sunlit day.
“Chris, what’s happening?”
“I thought you were going to tell us,” I laughed. A few minutes later the two shared another relieved smile as I waved them off in their car on their way to the Sunday Standard.
What did happen on those violent nights was no laughing matter. Back in his newsroom, Choto told, gesturing with his painful and swollen hands, how his torturers pushed live electric wires into his testicles. He was in so much pain he snapped the chain of his handcuffs.
The torturers were worried, at the end of their work, as the blood poured down the faces of the two young journalists; they feared Aids, Choto said. It had been raining heavily outside, so the torturers kicked their two young countrymen, naked, down a grassy bank to wipe off the blood.
To cap it all, the Supreme Court threw out the case against the two on constitutional grounds. A letter to the editor would have saved everyone pain, shame, money and trouble. The journalists believed their ordeal was a warning to the independent press.
Choto flew to London for psychological and physical repair. He took a fellowship at Stanford University, California, before joining the Voice of America in Washington. In 2002, he went home to visit his family where a military source told him to get out fast; his family agreed. He hasn’t set foot in Zimbabwe for more than 15 years and missed his mother’s funeral in May 2010; a thorn in his heart, he says.
Chavunduka died young in 2002; friends agree his ordeal hastened his demise.
When I spoke to Choto on that night call, we chuckled through our reminiscing. We talked of  hardship and lost friends, in the robust way journalists do, that’s how we live with the pain.
For me, I will always think of the smiling Choto and Chavunduka, bathed in that summer light, as they drove from court with broken bodies and many nightmares to come. How many journalists pay this high price for principle? I wonder why Africa breaks its youngest and brightest on the wheel.

Torture That Could Have Shamed The Devil

It was the best of times. It was a time when anything seemed possible; a time when hope blew through the tall blue gum trees like the gentle autumn breeze that wafted us along the road. We were on our way to a military base – a place where you don’t usually look for silver linings. Maybe we were just younger and the world looked better.
It was April 1994 and behind the barbed wire and automatic weapons of this army base in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, there was a story that could have gladdened the heart of anyone sick of war. At this camp one of the symbolic last rites were going to be said over one of the nastier running wars of sub-Saharan Africa – or was that nastier running sores? At last, the days of surveillance, killings, and torture were over.
By the end of this day, former foes would swap stories of war over a cold beer in a new, unified, South African army; a few days later, on April 27, these soldiers would help make history. They were at polling stations as millions of South Africans lined up across the country to vote in the first delicate democratic elections that would bury nearly 350 years of minority rule.
Hope was in abundance in those crazy days in Harare. It had been the home for many political exiles from South Africa for decades. Furthermore, it seemed to be the last stop-off point for returning exiles in their sneakers and baseball caps.
“I’m going home to run my country,” they would say, in the bars of Harare, in accents more Los Angeles than Langlaagte. Most were well educated and well versed; but I always noticed a little uncertainty in their faces when they spoke of a country many had never seen.
It all seemed so fresh then. The chance of a new start for one of the most tormented countries in Africa; a bountiful country about to throw off the shackles of sanctions and reap the rewards of an avalanche of post-apartheid investment – the rainbow nation in waiting.
This gathering at the army base in Harare paved the way for the historic elections. Soldiers of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – the military wing of the African National Congress and APLA, the army of the Pan Africanist Congress – were preparing for election duty. It was likely to be difficult and dangerous task – as the soldiers drilled in Harare, bombs were going off in Johannesburg. Armed groups of all creeds and colors threatened to hurl South Africa into a civil war. The elections threatened to be a bloodbath.
Many thought it was too late to train troops for an election days away. That is what I asked the then head of MK, Siphiwe Nyanda, who was to become head of the new South African army and later a cabinet minister.
“We will be ready,” he smiled.
In the ranks on that day were a number of white South African troops who were going to have to fall in, in the new army, with black guerrilla fighters they once had been paid to kill.
“As long as they can reject their racism, we can work together,” said one of the battle-hardened guerrillas of his new white comrades.
Then there was the training. Military instructors spent hours instructing the former guerrillas how to thwart the very incursions and bombings that they had been carrying out for decades. Everyone was enthusiastic with one eye on a brighter future as poachers enthusiastically turned gamekeepers.
As the last beers were drained in the golden sunset and the troops climbed onto the back of trucks there was a feeling of camaraderie; almost an end-of-term levity about it. Former foes were to become the midwives of a new democracy.
Days later, we watched the pictures of millions casting their votes for the first time. The soldiers, trained in Harare, were vigilant; it is one of the small miracles of Africa that there was no violence as votes were cast.
On May 10, we watched again as helicopters carrying the new South African flag flew low over the Union Buildings in Pretoria to the cheers of thousands.
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world,” Nelson Mandela said to the world.
As we all watched with broad smiles, Norman Mahaja, our sound recordist on the Harare military base story, brought us crashing down to earth.
“I want to go down south and earn the rand now,” he said.
“Why?”
“Before it becomes like the Zimbabwe dollar.”

Guerrillas Turned Gamekeepers On A Day Of Hope

Thousands walked along the rain-soaked road. Their faces covered in dirt, some in blood. Their eyes cried for safety. Thousands more added to the 1.6 million of displaced people in South Sudan – desperately fleeing some of the worst violence in Africa’s newest nation.
In December 2013, South Sudan’s then vice president, Riek Machar, fled to the bush amid accusations from President Salva Kiir of trying to stage a coup. The truth of what actually happened is still unclear.
Nevertheless, Machar did not go alone. An experienced military leader, he took with him an army of rebels.  An inter-tribal civil war has ravaged the newly-formed country ever since.
South Sudan is one of the world’s least developed countries; born out of Africa’s longest running civil war. In 2005, a peace deal ended the war and six years later, the country gained independence. The oil-rich region of Unity State saw a lot of commercial investment during this time and offered the country hope of prosperity. At the outbreak of war, this area would become a fiercely contested prize.
Six months into the conflict, I investigated what was happening in the region, the extent of the conflict, and whether it was safe for aid workers to carry out their vital work.
North of Bentiu, the capital of Unity State, government forces positioned themselves to retaliate against the rebel soldiers who had occupied a small village for the previous three days. Locals had spent 72 hours living in a shared nightmare. Machar’s rebels arrived under the cover of darkness, announcing their presence with automatic gunfire aimed indiscriminately at men, women and children.
Nothing remains more vivid in my mind, from my time investigating the conflict, than hearing the horror of the survivors describing the violence. They claimed that children had been raped and hanged. Entire families were burned alive in their thatched huts. Only a handful managed to escape the massacre.
The recapture of the village did not end the horror for the survivors. Those who could not flee would be victims to the next group of occupying war fighters.
It was a story shared by civilians throughout South Sudan. The United Nations has accused both sides of ethnic cleansing and widespread forced displacement. Looting, sexual assault and torture was also said to be rampant.
The use of child soldiers has been widespread. Often as young as 10, these children are used for frontline and support roles, sometimes for sexual purposes. Unicef estimates 12,000 children are currently being used by the armed forces and are “increasingly vulnerable to violence and to sexual abuse and exploitation”.
Nearly two years later, more than 2.2 million people have fled their homes. The conflict has affected neighbors on all sides, with refugees seeking a safer and better quality of life. Multiple peace treaties have been broken by Machar and Kiir. A country which has so much to offer, culturally and commercially, is slipping ever further into chaos.
With the latest accusations of both sides breaking the August 2015 peace treaty, it’s yet to be seen what the future holds for South Sudan. Hopefully there will be a mutual commitment to peace so the millions of displaced people can finally return to their homes.
&#8211; Daniel Wheeler

Haunting Memories Of A Massacre

The pursuit of Al-Shabaab militants by soldiers of the African Union and the Kenyan Defence Forces opened the country to a string of systematic retaliatory attacks that saw major tourist markets shy away.
The latest attack was the twin bombings in Nairobi’s sprawling Gikomba market in May that claimed the lives of 10 innocent Kenyans and left 70 others injured. This happened while Britain, France and Australia were busy evacuating their citizens from the coastal city of Mombasa. With every attack confirming just how porous Kenya’s security apparatus is, travel alerts are swiftly triggered.
The number of tourists from January to December in 2013 closed at 1.49 million – a 15.8% drop in comparison to the 1.7 million arrivals the year before. This further dims the hopes of ever attaining the Kenyan tourism ministry’s target of attracting 3 million visitors to Kenya’s parks, beaches and conservancies each year.
The tourism window earned east Africa’s biggest economy just over $1 billion in revenue during that period. Kenya can ill afford that figure dropping. And while the dwindling numbers are worrisome, the administration in Nairobi maintains it will not relent on its campaign against extremists.
Kenya’s main tourist source markets, including Britain, the United States, Italy, India and Germany, exhibited the biggest decline in numbers in 2013, however a quick glance at the arrival numbers from Africa shows signs of a market that has been long ignored and whose potential is yet to be fully realized. Uganda maintains its number one slot as an African source market for Kenya, bringing in 47,398 visitors in 2013 alone, followed by South Africa and Tanzania.
The introduction of a 16% value added tax levy on parks and conservancy fees in September by the Kenya Revenue Authority caused another bout of panic in an already fragile industry.
Fears were rife that the change would lead to a hike in the cost of hotel bookings and travel expenses; further discouraging European and western tourists that are still licking their wounds from the Eurozone crisis. It was not long before tourists voted with their feet, cementing many analysts’ assertions that the move to slap the industry with the extra levy was proof of the government’s doublespeak.
The lack of government involvement in the marketing of this vital sector is often a hot topic at many tourism workshops. Having just returned from a tourism indaba in South Africa, Minaz Manji, the managing director of Twiga Tours, who has operated in the East African tourism space for the past three decades, reckons that governments are doing very little to promote the tourism resource at their disposal.
In the 2014/15 budget estimates, the Kenyan government set aside $22.9 million for the tourism docket with $14.8 million going into recurrent projects and the balance for development. It is this figure that infuriates Manji and many other players in this space.
“How many billboards or TV adverts can you put in Europe or Asia when you only have $8 million for a whole year. Is this government serious?” asks Manji.
The obsession with the bush and the beach by East Africa’s tourism bodies, including the Kenya Tourism Board, has also come under sharp criticism. Players in the sector point to destinations like the Kremlin in Moscow. It attracts a million visitors every three months to sample its history, perhaps proof that diversifying tourism in Africa should quickly gain traction.
In recent months, international hotel chains like Hemingways, Best Western Premier and Villa Rosa Kempinski have set up shop in Nairobi while the New York Stock Exchange-listed hotel chain, Wyndham, plan to enter the Kenyan market at the end of the year. These developments have left 6 million spaces for Kenya’s tourism industry to fill, creating a lot of room to attract investors.
There are no quick solutions in the quest to save Kenya’s tourism sector, but there are low hanging fruits that would set it on the right track in the short term. Kenya needs to amend taxation laws to make it favorable for operators, increase funding for the promotion of tourism and look at developing joint regional marketing of the East African region to make it an attractive destination once again. All of this, however, can only be possible if Kenya successfully tackles the escalating terror threat.

Tempt Tourists Back

The foot soldiers in the war against rhino poaching risk their lives every night. Preventing poachers from wiping the rhino off the face of Africa is a job for unsung heroes. Often, all they have are blisters to show for it.
They face questions from loved ones over the risky lives they lead. Last year, a lion dragged a sleeping anti-poaching officer from his bed under the stars and killed him.
It costs R20,000 ($1,900) a month for one unit, working as a two-man team.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31143" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
They have to be quick. All it takes for a poacher to kill a rhino is an hour. In five hours, the horn can be over the border and on a plane. Anti-poaching officers are on high alert 24/7. All have military training. This is a taste of their hard lives, as private money comes into the game.
Sergeant Tumi Morema
It’s 2AM at the Thorny Bush Game Lodge. The off-road vehicle’s yellow headlights pierce the landscape. Sergeant Thumi Morema is at the wheel looking for poachers. The 33 year old comes from the community in the area surrounding the private big game farms. He remembers the day he made his first arrest.
“We were searching for an old man who was hunting with dogs. If we find poaching dogs we shoot them. We found his snares and set an ambush… we saw his dogs approaching under a tree we were sitting in. The old man stopped beneath us and started fixing the snares. I jumped out of the tree, went around and came up behind him. I touched him on the shoulder, he got such a fright. We tied him and his dogs up. This man had been hunting all his life and had never been caught. I’ve been hunting before. I called it hunting, you called it poaching. I call it poaching now,” he says.
Since then, he has caught more than 50 would-be poachers. Thirty six of them have been sentenced in court. According to Morema, only a few can cut it. Of the 42 men who trained with him, only two made it.
He has spent his adult life supporting his 18 family members after his older brother died. He says his community has ostracized him since going over to what they call ‘the white famers’ side’.
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My family is so scared  i will be eaten by lions”

While most boys his age were playing sports with friends, 13-year-old Ishmael Beah was a professional killing machine, who could fire an AK-47 as though it were an extension of his arm. He was one of around 300,000 children, who are involved in more than 30 global conflicts to this day.
His dream of being an economist was devastated after his immediate family was slain by the Revolutionary United Front rebel group in the early 1990s, during the civil war, which tore through Sierra Leone.
“After almost a year of running, I—along with some friends I met along the way—arrived at an army base in the southeastern region. We thought we were now safe; little did we know what lay ahead.”
Beah was forcefully drafted into the Sierra Leone army, where he fought for three years. The combination of marijuana and ‘brown-brown’—cocaine mixed with gunpowder—made him fearless. The child soldiers repeatedly watched Rambo, which was powered by a car battery, and were initiated by shooting lined-up prisoners. The girls were sex slaves of the commanders.
<div id="attachment_31137" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31137" class="size-medium wp-image-31137" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War</div>
He was placed in a rehabilitation center by UNICEF, where he underwent psycho-social therapy for eight months before being introduced to his uncle from Freetown.
In 1996, Beah visited the United Nations, following Graça Machel’s study about the impact of armed conflict on children. That was when he met Laura Simms—a Brooklyn-born, Jewish-American—who would become his adopted mother. She was the emotional support behind his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. He did not intend to publish it until his university professor encouraged it. But criticism comes with success.
“People started saying, ‘Why are you celebrating this? This is a bad thing that happened.’ And some people even called me a liar and said, ‘How can you remember any of this stuff?’… But I didn’t mind any of these things because since I came from this experience, I’ve always been chastised, whether it’s through stigma or in other ways, people sometimes split on the issue of young people, like me, who fought in a war as a child, whether you’re really a victim or a perpetrator. Some people are always trying to debate that fine line and use you as the pundit for that discussion, so I just ignore some of these things. Once I had really committed to publish the book, I knew that it was a story—even though it was my personal story—that was bigger than myself because this is a very small story about a much larger issue.”
Beah hasn’t stopped the fight for childhood. He is a UNICEF advocate for children affected by conflict, and works on policy level with the UN and governments to implement legislations. During his most-recent visit to the Central African Republic (CAR) where eight armed groups and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) remain at large, he helped release 10 children.
The planning of a rescue mission can take up to six months. Most groups allow UNICEF to interview children and negotiate for their release. The CAR government signed a protocol, which will remove children from armed groups including the government army. When the war ends their sentences will be reduced.
Beah criticized Kony2012—a short film about Joseph Kony that went viral on YouTube in 2012—for being too simplistic, inaccurate and for presenting the situation as “The white man savior mentality”.
<div id="attachment_31138" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31138" class="size-medium wp-image-31138" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War</div>
“… You left a very complex situation to the interpretation of a kid. So there’s a good guy and a bad guy, let’s get the bad guy. Really? This is how you solve the problem of a war?”
So what can we do?
“Look for an issue that you actually care about and find what it is that you can contribute to it, whether it’s financially or skills-wise […] But you can’t bury your head in the sand and expect to lift it up and for everything to be okay again.”
While Beah never became an economist, this year he will begin his PhD at Harvard in Law and Society, with a focus on how to repair collapsed societies. His foundation provides scholarships to children in Sierra Leone to dissuade them from a life of violence.
Today, you wouldn’t pick this 32-year-old—who has saved the world, for some—out of a New York crowd.   FL

Tag: Soldiers

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

A Mistake That Cost A Million A Month

The Multi-Million-Dollar Author Who Defied Death

Torture That Could Have Shamed The Devil

Guerrillas Turned Gamekeepers On A Day Of Hope

Haunting Memories Of A Massacre

Tempt Tourists Back

My family is so scared i will be eaten by lions”

Easing the killing machines out of the dark