Film Review Assignment on Poverty and Social Development

FILM REVIEW
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Introduction
Africa Rising documentary film based on research done in a region called Sodo in Ethiopia. The film aims to highlight the problems in Ethiopia as a developing country and suggests solutions on how to eradicate poverty and hardships in Ethiopia and other similar regions in Africa. Ethiopia like many parts of Africa is a potentially prosperous nation with plenty of resources, but several factors have limited the people of Ethiopia from fully tapping the readily available resources. The film points out the challenges faced by the Ethiopian people, which include: low life expectancy, famine, lack of education, lack of good health care and failure of western governments on their roles toward developing countries. The documentary incorporates extraordinary stories of how large rural areas in Ethiopia are trying to take themselves out of poverty. The answer to the problem was an unthinkable and a simple program, whereby twenty men and women were featured in a program and taught new skills such as soil rotation, livestock rearing, bricklaying, dam building and micro banking. Throughout the film, the following themes are depicted: Improvement of agriculture methods, management of education, health management and proper money lending and saving scheme. Consequently, the film push for African people to be given a chance to fight poverty and famine by themselves rather helping them through funding that ends banks accounts of selfish individuals.
Improvement Agriculture Methods
The theme of improvement in agriculture is heavily depicted throughout the film. First, the documentary narrates on how to improve land and water management (Al Jazeera, 2017). The torrential rains from the Ethiopian highlands tend to cause massive soil erosion, which carries away the top fertile soil leaving the lands bare and very few crops would grow. After which drought befalls the land, thus causing crop failure that ends up subjecting the population to hunger. From the documentary, more than four million children would die in twelve months due to starvation. In an attempt to manage the problem, the community leaders came up with projects of stopping soil erosion by building retaining walls that also prevents water runoff. In addition, they built up trenches that would direct rainwater from the mountains to the water reservoirs (Al Jazeera, 2017). The water collected in the reservoirs would be used in times of drought for home use and also irrigation.
Second, the film gives the idea of growing water resistant crops, another solution to the hanger problem. As revealed, the community was only depending on the maize crop, which would scorch during the dry seasons (Mahajan, 2011). Therefore, the farmers were taught on how to grow water resistant crops such as banana plant, which was also referred to as magic plan. The suggested plant would only grow in the highlands, but with the help of the self-help group, a breed that would grow in the lowland plains was introduced (Mahajan, 2011). The plant was preferable due to its multiple benefits. For example, when its stem was squeezed, it would produce little wate...