Ebola lassoed three West African countries to the ground in 2014 without any prior warning. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone found themselves quarantined from the rest of the world, totally cutting off commerce, travel and social life. The unpreparedness of the world for such an epidemic made initial response slow in coming; and after it was all over, you could see graves that stretched for miles in some communities, businesses had folded, orphans roamed the streets, many homes had been emptied of its members and those who survived still live with the pain of their loss and the stigma of the disease. Clients: Americares, The Global Fund, Open Society Foundation, SEND Sierra Leone

Obstetric Fistula is the most life shattering childbirth related injury a woman can suffer. The stench that shrouds patients because they cannot control their urine or faeces or both, gets them ostracized, divorced and often totally abandoned. In a culture where women who give birth at home are considered “strong”, many don’t bother going for prenatal consultation or even consider giving birth in a hospital until there is a complication during labour. Pregnant women who face prolonged labour can end up being in labour for up to six or seven days. In rural Mali, it is quite common for girls as young as 12 years to be married off, and most of them becoming mothers by age 14 or 15. Since their bodies are often not mature enough to handle the stress that comes with child birth, Fistula is quite often inevitable, though totally preventable. “An obstetric fistula is a hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, leaving a woman incontinent of urine or feces or both. ...The labor produces contractions that push the baby’s head against the mother’s pelvic bone. The soft tissues between the baby’s head and the pelvic bone are compressed and do not receive adequate blood flow. The lack of blood flow causes this delicate tissue to die, and where it dies holes are created between the laboring mother’s bladder and vagina and/or between the rectum and vagina. This is what produces incontinence in a fistula patient”: fistulafoundation(dot)org Thanks to IntraHealth, a number of these women in Mali are receiving free medical support but victory is far from sight.

In some worlds, money loses its solidness, nobody speaks about it in definite terms anymore. They don’t say “I have 100 cedis in my bank account” or “I earn 50 cedis every week” or any such language of specificities. They talk about money as one recounts a hazy dream; an apparition that half manifested, a mystery they can’t fathom. I wasn’t aware such a world existed until I was recently commissioned by UNICEF to do a story on Inequality in Ghana. Ideally, a nation would have its super-wealthy few, and its miserably poor few, and the masses somewhere in between. Inequality is when the numbers at the extremes grow whilst the numbers in the middle shrink. There is no omen of impending doom more accurate than that widening gap. Like Cassandra, clairvoyants like us, can through our mediums- photography, writing and videos, draw the nation and the world’s attention to this phenomenon but the demigods who rule down here get to call the shots. We can only hope that they’ll hearken to the omen and save our Troy from burning. To avoid the obvious trap of juxtaposing poverty porn and opulence, I decided to tow the middle path; drive around the country, speak to regular folk, see for myself and hear their stories from their own lips.

How important is a road? I traveled from Addis Ababa to Nairobi by road, documenting the new road that connects the two countries; through the gender lens. By photographing and talking to women who live or work by or on the road, I discovered that, may be, access to good roads should be a fundamental human right. A good road can mean the difference between a woman in labour losing her child or accessing a good doctor quickly. It saves an old lady's tired legs from trekking for miles with her produce on her head, looking for buyers. The young woman on her way to see her boyfriend is happy that she won't get there all dusty. And then there are all these communities that spring out of nowhere the moment a road is constructed. Client: AfDB

I've been documenting Ghana's beach life for many years. When I need an update on current youth culture, I pick up a camera, and walk to the beach.

The Net Girls is the birth child of a "What If Moment". In Ghana, street hawkers sell all sorts but of all their wares, the nets are the most colorful. And here is what happens when creative minds get to work in treating the bathing nets (sponges) as couture. Photos: Nana Kofi Acquah MUA: Hamid Vijay Stylist: Kelvincent Models: Laurie and Gina

To quote Dennis Brutus, the famous South African Poet, "I send these fragments/random pebbles I pick up/from the landscape of my own experience... in a montage of glimpses/I allow myself/or stumble across”.

Leprosy is an ancient disease that still thrives in the shadows of poverty and ignorance all around the world. The weight of the stigma and rejection that patients suffer, seems to do far more damage to them than the physical effects of the disease itself; in spite of its debilitating nature. The mission to create a Zero Leprosy world is almost within reach. Novartis Foundation committed to the cause over 30 years ago. These images are from Ifakara, Tanzania.

Moringa is called The Tree of Life in some local communities in Africa. The plant is beginning to gain more popularity as a new “superfood” and so some local farmers have started growing Moringa, for which they seem to have a ready market. The leaves of Moringa Oleifera are nature's multi-vitamin providing 7 x the vitamin C of oranges, 4 x the calcium of milk, 4 x the vitamin A of carrots, 3 x the potassium of bananas, and 2 x the protein of yogurt. On top of that, Moringa has no known impurities, with no adverse reactions ever recorded. Client: Aduna

These are black and white portraits of girls at the tail end of innocence. In Ghana, girls in public schools are made to cut their hair low. This is a policy designed to delay their blossoming into womanhood- to keep them looking not very different from the boys; to delay how soon they become pregnant. For most adolescent girls, pregnancy means the end of education.

when sun burns orange vignetted by encroaching night she casts gold softly on everyone warmly assuring everything that though she now must die by morning she'll return mother never truly leaves #portraits, #africanwomen, #mothers, #muslimwomen, #traditionalwomen, #burkinafaso, #ghana