Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas

And action!

Shall we begin?

The airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,

six years ago ...

This is where the story began.

On the tarmac, I see white cargo planes being unloaded.

Food aid coming into the country.

And at the same time, food being exported out.

Why is a famine-struck country receiving food aid,

exporting food to the rich world? To us?

It didn't make sense.

Returning to find out more,

I couldn't imagine that it was the beginning of a much bigger story.

Wherever I go in the city, everything seems to be about development.

Hunger and poverty are to be eradicated, by any means necessary.

For the Ethiopian government, the solution is to invite foreign investors.

We are inviting foreign companies

to come and invest in land, to boost Ethiopia's economic growth,

says Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

He emphasized the advantages

of foreign investments in the country.

The government plans to give away millions of hectares of land

to foreign agricultural investors.

The call from the government is heard.

In the luxury hotels of the city,

I meet international business people and venturers, looking for opportunities.

The hot topic on everyone's lips is farmland,

what they call the new green gold.

We have nearly 66,248 hectares

of developed land in Ethiopia,

producing and exporting

coffee, flour, tea, fruit and...

When I came here, I first went to the investment office.

They said that they were keen to have foreign investment here

to stimulate business

and also to improve their foreign exchange balance.

It's a commercial operation.

I could see that it was suitable for what I wanted to do here.

Great rainfall, uh, good soils, and a really interesting situation.

So I just thought: give it a go.

Investors bringing money to a poor country might be good,

but what happens to the local farmers when the investors arrive?

Knowing nothing about the country, I am pretty lost.

But I get to know an environmental journalist dealing with the land issues.

The scenario is a big commercial farm

will appear in the centre of the park.

It means, it damage the overall ecological system of the park.

And it's never reported by the media.

Losing that forest means, I think it is another big disaster.

Because you can't recover that forest maybe for the next 500 years.

Wherever there is fertile land in Ethiopia,

you'll find land investors.

In recent months,

I've heard a lot of reports from the Western region.

Now I want to see with my own eyes what exactly is going on.

Argaw allows me to join him

on his investigative trip to the Gambela region,

far away in Western Ethiopia.

After two days of driving, we finally reach Gambela.

For ages, this region has been an isolated corner of Ethiopia.

Somehow it reminds of a forgotten world, still untouched by modern civilisation.

But now, things are changing.

Why are you stopping here?

I'm not allowed to go any farther.

Why not?

This farmland was given to investors. So I'm not allowed to go farther.

- Why is that? - I'm banned by law.

- I may not enter it or even photograph it. - Mm-hm.

Why is that?

I'm not allowed to go to the area where my seedlings are.

This is a big problem.

- Mm-hm. - Um.

What would happen if you went there?

I had to promise not to go there.

- What would they do to you? - I would be punished.

From birth, we and the forest belong to each other.

The forest is the source of everything we have in our life.

It's because we are poor that our voices are not heard.

It's only the investors who have a say in our forest.

Why are our voices ignored?

This is my grief.

Why doesn't the government treat us fairly?

Why should our forest be given away to the investors?

Leaving the farmer, we follow the new road.

We drive deeper into the heart of Gambela

and reach Ethiopia's largest national park.

The park covers over 5,000 square kilometres,

stretching all the way to South Sudan,

and is the habitat of many endangered species.

This enormous area is also home to indigenous people,

living off of small farming, fishing and hunting.

The dream is to expand this park to South Sudan.

To make this park the second

to the Serengeti Park, in Africa now.

This is the Gambela region.

There is a national park in the middle here.

The area is full of many species, wild animals.

And there is pressure that farm investors

are coming to Gambela to be given land.

So our worry now is to do the demarcation quickly,

as soon as possible, so that the...

...the investors cannot be allocated in the centre of the park.

So this is what we are doing. But, who knows?

As the pressure comes from the federal,

our plan may be weakened.

We don't know. But you see, we're trying our best.

This is, uh, where we are now up to now.

The park official, Omot,

is worried that his small staff can't control the vast area of the park.

A few hours later, we discover that his concerns appear to be justified.

- -

At a junction, there's a road sign,

a company named Saudi Star.

What we saw was very disturbing.

I wonder what the Saudi Star company is up to in the area.

If they are expanding into the national park,

they will seriously damage the wildlife and the lives of the local people.

In the regional capital, Argaw goes out alone to find information

about the government's plans for the national park

and the Saudi Star company.

The local security police find out that Argaw is asking around

and they arrest him.

The entire night, Argaw is interrogated at the police headquarters.

Early in the morning, he is released and ordered to leave Gambela immediately.

He is told,

"If you care about your security, don't ever come back."

We ran into trouble.

I was taken by the police.

They cross-examined me, took my ID and forced me to leave Gambela.

There is something they want to hide.

I feel a kind of fear in most places,

particularly in rural places.

They cannot understand you are a journalist.

They cannot understand you have a right to criticize government policies.

They cannot understand that is your job

and always they are trying to create a sense of fear

and a serious warning and...

In that condition,

you feel that you might end up in jail, or you might be attacked by someone.

Okay, then you run away from that place.

Argaw was lucky to make it out of Gambela,

but for him, this story is too important to drop.

Regarding the Gambela National Park.

The Saudi Star Farm and the park are to be located side by side.

Where can I get official information about this plan?

Okay. So it is not accessible?

- - I see.

During the big famine in the '80s,

about 400,000 people died.

And almost every family lost loved ones.

But the hunger has not disappeared.

Today, millions are still dependent on food aid for their survival.

Now, investors from all over the world are coming here to get farmland.

If, at the same time, agricultural land is taken away from our farmers,

and the crops are exported,

there may be even more hunger.

Before, hardly any international investors

cared about farmland in Africa.

So, why are they so interested now?

Searching for answers, I go to the global financial centres.

In New York, the largest conference for agricultural investors is held.

I let myself in through the back door.

It reminds me a bit of the...

Someone asks a famous American bank robber why does he rob banks.

"Because that's where the money is," is what he said.

And the same way, that's why people invest in agriculture.

Because now, there's money in it.

You actually can make profits in agriculture,

in a way that you probably couldn't 10, 20 years ago.

But things changed, uh, around the middle of the 2000s,

when we had a big spike in food prices.