After several months in which the Nairobi office remained vacant, Kenya and all of Sub-Saharan Africa have a new RAI correspondent. Taking over from historian Enzo Nucci, who retired last October after opening the Westlands bureau in 2006, is a prestigious signature of state television. Valerio Cataldi, 55, a special correspondent for TG2 since 1997 among others in South America, the Middle East and Africa, then author and anchor of the successful series "Narcotica" and Chief Investigations Editor of Rainews 24, has agreed to "cover" this part of the continent that is increasingly strategic worldwide, also because this is not a first for him, as he tells the portal of Italians in Kenya.
"My first mission abroad was in 1994, South Africa, the first multiracial elections. I looked out for the first time on this huge continent at a historic, incredibly important event that changed the fate of that country but also of the continent and the whole world. I was not working in RAI at the time; I started working there a few years later. I have traveled as a journalist to much of the planet and have returned to Africa many times. Respect for human rights is the theme that has moved my work in my now 30-year career. I have been around migration routes a lot but I am not obsessed with migration, I think it is an important issue but too often the subject of political instrumentalization. The obsession with migration transforms the facts, distorts the perception of the phenomenon. This is demonstrated by Africa itself, which experiences and has always experienced internal movements of enormous magnitude and with great positive balance, which is what we Europeans are unable to perceive or accept."
He will be the face associated with the reports that will be broadcast on RAI networks and the voice that will inform from national radio news programs. Reporting on African countries today, which are constantly evolving and changing, with all the paradoxes, struggles and problems that these entail, but also the stories of courage and success, is a challenge Cataldi has willingly decided to take up.
"I believe that this is the continent that is the most unknown because it is the least told," admits the new RAI correspondent from Nairobi, "into which it is necessary to enter with respect and great determination, affirming that colonialism is by no means ancient history and that here, perhaps more than anywhere else, some of the most important games for the entire planet are being played. I think it is necessary to highlight all that is positive about this continent, which, contrary to popular belief, is by no means poor. The icons of children with swollen bellies and flies on their eyes, while they represent a real problem, certainly do not represent the whole of Africa. What needs to be told is the other face of this continent, the vibrant, proud, rich and talented one. That is what I will try to do."
Karibu Kenya, Valerio, as they say here.