Liberia

On February 27, Jina Moore was interviewed for the Washington Journal program on C-SPAN about her reporting on Africa's land issues for the Christian Science Monitor.

Watch the interview on C-SPAN.

Reproduced with permission from The Christian Science Monitor.

The specialists know the warning signs. Analysts and scientists and field officers and academics spend years writing white papers, issuing reports and holding conferences, trying to provoke interest in issues that often seem arcane. Please, they have urged governments and the United Nations and activists, think about something that sounds boring – land disputes – before it turns into something that is not – war.

Jina Moore, for the Pulitzer Center (Photos by Glenna Gordon)

This is a slideshow photographer Glenna Gordon and I prepared for the Christian Science Monitor, which features my reporting and her photographs in this week's cover story, "The African Divide." The article focuses on how land has been at the root of many of Africa's most well-known conflicts -- and the promising steps some countries are taking to solve the land problem.

Jina Moore, for the Pulitzer Center

When Glenna Gordon and I started digging into a pretty incredible legal scandal, we knew it would get people riled up. What we didn't know is whether the brouhaha stirred by our report would have any real effect.

Liberia is coming up on the one-year anniversary of Court E, a judicial innovation the country hopes will help it tackle an epidemic of rape. Glenna Gordon explains the court, and the difficulties it's had in its first year. And our World Vision Report on the court airs soon; stay tuned.

Some of my favorite pictures are never published. They aren't part of an assignment or a narrative, but they're what happens while I'm waiting for the assignment or the narrative. There's a lot of waiting involved in working as a journalist in Africa. Having a camera keeps it interesting. It's an excuse to wander around the periphery and peek into people's homes and people's lives. There's so much I don't understand – what's being said, what is meant, what is wanted, what is next.

When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected Liberia's president in 2005, she inherited a country wrecked by civil war and began to transform it. Today, school enrollment is up 40 percent, Monrovia has power and running water, and trade in diamonds and timber is up again. NEWSWEEK's Jina Moore met recently with the former World Bank economist to talk about terrorism, the resource curse, and Obama's Africa agenda.

Is Obama keeping his promises to African leaders and their people?