How climate change is causing African jihadism and the migration crisis — Exclusive interview with documentary maker Reza Pakravan
People starved of international travel at the moment might wish for some escapism, to see the world from the confines of their home. While some will drool over Instagram images of gilded beaches and infinity pools, those wanting their vicarious vacation with much more edge could do worse than to check out a new travel documentary series: The World’s Most Dangerous Borders.
It sees filmmaker Reza Pakravan travel across the Sahel, a region that stretches the breadth of Africa, skirting the Sahara desert’s southern edge. The Sahel includes some of the continent’s most troubled and treacherous countries, including Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sudan. Jihadis, mass migration, human traffickers, war, extreme poverty, child labour and global warming are among the many plagues upon this land – and Pakravan, who talks to me from the slightly less perilous location of his garden shed in West London, encountered them all.
The most pressing question I have for him is: “Why?”
“In 2018, I went to Chad,” says Pakravan. “I’ve travelled in a hundred countries and what I saw in Chad really, really blew my mind – how little we know about this region, which is basically sandwiched between the Sahara and African Savannah. It’s just so behind. It was like time travel, going back hundreds of years. You see people with spears and bows and arrows, which in the rest of Africa doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone’s walking around with a mobile phone [in other countries], but I didn’t see a single mobile phone in Chad. I decided if I really want to understand, I needed to travel all of it.”