HORIZON INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS SITE

 Zakaria Ouedraogo filming

Zakaria Ouedraogo, a young man with “a passion to discover the environment in all its components by making documentary films,” spent several years traveling throughout his native Burkina Faso, and Mali and the Ivory Coast seeking to learn about environmental degradation.  The women of Lele’s plight is described in a three-minute film he produced, entitled, “Nzoue Fiyen,” which means water not drinkable in the local language. It was published on YouTube in November 2019. 

Dedication, conviction and persistence have carried Zakaria forward. He was strongly influenced by his father, Rasmané Ouedraogo, an internationally renowned award-winning Filmmaker, Director, Producer and Comedian who heads FESPACO, a pan-African film festival.  Rasmané Ouedraogo is training people in West Africa media production on WASH, a subject about which he has for many years produced documentaries and feature films. In 1995, he co-directed and hosted Horizon International’s TV program “Burkinabé: People With A Future” produced for the United National Population Programme (UNFPA) for presentation at the Beijing World Conference on Women (World Conference on Women, 1995 – Wikipedia).  The one-hour film is available on the jselendy YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiP5ex5GvI4&t=20s.

For his Internship with Horizon International, an NGO based at Yale University, Zakaria focused on WASH, seeking stories to film from trash polluting city waterways serving as drinking water for local communities to the struggles to find potable water in rural communities.

It was this search which lead him to the Ivory Coast. There, in the small community of Lele, 260 kilometers south of Abidjan, a major city on the Atlantic coast, he found women carrying water for 3 miles each way struggling along forest paths with water balanced on their heads and their children by their sides in order to have water that is only suitable for washing, leaving them to depend on intermittent rainwater for drinking.

The women of Lele’s plight is described in a three-minute film he produced, entitled, “Nzoue Fiyen,” which means water not drinkable in the local language. It was published on YouTube in November 2019.  Rasmané Ouedraogo and Janine Selendy, co-chair, founder and publisher of Horizon International, provided guidance and both narrate. The script was co-author by Frances de Larminat and Janine Selendy. The Montage was by Sanata Ouedraogo, and the sound was by Moumouni Yaro.

It draws upon statistics from: https://washdata.org/

“According the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, as of 2017, 2.2 billion people lack safely managed water services, 4.2 billion lack safely managed sanitation and 3 billion lack basic hand-washing facilities.” WHO/UNICEF report 2019

Zakaria’s production represents the culmination of his Internship with Horizon International.  He now hopes to add to his formal filmmaking education to further his goal to advance understanding of problems especially in rural West African communities and to find knowledge of solutions.

 Rasmané Ouedraogo and his son, Zakaria

More about Rasmané Ouedraogo:

Rasmané Ouedraogo is an Award-winning Filmmaker, Director, Producer and Comedian with degrees from Paris film schools. As head, Production Department, National Film Center, he executive produced documentaries on WASH,  e.g. “Hygiene…,” “Diarrhea,” “Malaria,” “Clean water,” and had professional responsibility for 40 films. His community activities include Presidium Nantes Summer University, member Steering Committee Burkinabé Red Cross, founding member Burkinabé United Nations Associations, Safeguard the Environment, and communication consultant, National AIDS / STD Committee. He co-directed and hosted Horizon International’s TV program “Burkinabé: People With A Future.” He heads FESPACO, African film festival. He is training media production on WASH.

Article published on the Horizon International Solutions Site on December 5, 2019.