Fati Abubakar

Fati Abubakar is a Nigerian photojournalist and documentary photographer based in Maiduguri, Borno State. She is known for Bits of Borno, a long-running photographic series documenting daily life in northeastern Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency.

Early life and education Abubakar was born and raised in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. She earned a BSc in nursing from the University of Maiduguri, followed by a master's degree in public health and health promotion from London South Bank University in 2015. She later completed an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University in the United States.

Career Bits of Borno Abubakar began posting photographs to an Instagram account titled Bits of Borno in 2014, after returning to Maiduguri. She has said the project was motivated by a perceived imbalance in international coverage of the region, which she felt focused almost exclusively on violence and the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls while overlooking everyday life.

Alongside Bits of Borno, Abubakar has produced a series titled Education in a Crisis, documenting students returning to schools that had been closed for security reasons between 2014 and 2016, and The Other Abducted Girls, addressing women and girls abducted by Boko Haram in villages across Borno State. and Al Jazeera. She was previously a visiting lecturer at Duke Kunshan University in China.

Fati Abubakar Foundation Abubakar established the Fati Abubakar Foundation, which operates a photography and media training program for young people in Borno State. The foundation's first photography workshop, held in 2022, received several hundred applications for ten places; the program was eventually expanded to thirty participants, of whom roughly half were women. The foundation has leased a building in Maiduguri intended to serve as an arts centre with library, editing, and exhibition space, and lends cameras to participants who cannot afford their own equipment.