2015

VOICE OF AMERICA For the first time in decades, young basketball players in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, are holding tournaments at night thanks to improved security. For years, warlords and terrorist groups denied young Somalis the…

VOICE OF AMERICA At the height of the Ebola crisis in late 2014, social life in Liberia was at a standstill as people tried to avoid contact to keep themselves from catching the deadly virus. But in March 2015, with the infection rate…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Ethiopia set fire to a 6-ton pile of seized elephant ivory, the country’s entire stock, vowing a zero-tolerance policy toward poachers and traffickers. Burning the stock, which included huge tusks, elaborate…

REUTERS Ethiopia will complete expansion of the capital’s airport in 2018 to triple the number of passengers it handles from 7 million a year now and will soon pick a site for a new hub to deal with 10 times the number in the future, a…

THE CITIZEN, TANZANIA Business executives in East Africa are optimistic about the regional economy despite insecurity in Kenya and weakening currencies, a survey indicates. A global entrepreneur indicator survey conducted by…

ADF STAFF One thousand entrepreneurs representing 52 African countries are in the first class of winners of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Program. The winners were announced in March 2015. The selection committee was made up of…

REUTERS Jaki Kweka is that rare breed of gourmet chocolatier who makes fine chocolate in Tanzania using local ingredients. Other African companies such as Ghana’s Golden Tree use local cocoa but import milk powder and sugar.…

When Emperor Tewodros II came to power in Ethiopia in 1855, the country had been fragmented for nearly a century. The central government had been abolished in 1769, and the country was divided into small kingdoms. In the country’s history,…

CLUES This rare major inland delta system does not flow into an ocean or sea. The site has about 600,000 hectares of permanent swamps and about 1.2 million hectares of seasonally flooded grassland. Wildlife here has adapted its…

Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Sani, chief of transformation and innovation for the Nigerian Army, said his country is countering the threat of Boko Haram and other asymmetric threats by “thinking outside the box.” The military is taking the fight to…