A view from the North. Rural areas in 2016: Vibrant or vacant?

Two images have dominated the northern media in recent months.The first is of desolation in remote, rural areas in Africa affected by drought, conflict or famine, such as in Somalia, northern Kenya or Darfur, Sudan. The second is a different kind of desolation - that of urban squalor as portrayed in the film «The Constant Gardener». Nairobi's Kibera, which provides a backdrop for the film, is a bustling shantytown with a population of ca. 800,000 people on 250 hectares.The contrast between this and the images from the dry north, with their miles of empty barrenness, could not be greater.