ADF

ADF STAFF Ethiopian security forces killed at least 45 civilians in their homes in Amhara State in late January, according to the state-affiliated Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The commission said in a statement that victims in the northern town of Merawi were killed for allegedly supporting Fano, an Amharic word meaning “volunteer fighters.” A pregnant woman was among the victims. “It can be assumed that the number of victims is even higher,” the commission said. Witnesses told the BBC that uniformed Ethiopian security officers conducted house-to-house searches after several hours of fighting between Ethiopian forces and Fano fighters on January…

ADF STAFF More than a decade of violent conflicts in the Sahel has given rise to the thriving business of firearms trafficking, in which demand far outpaces supply. With a 2022 population of 4.2 million, Mali’s capital city of Bamako is one of the primary centers for the illegal weapons trade. Oluwole Ojewale, Central Africa regional coordinator for the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, authored a recent study that examined the causes of arms trafficking in Bamako. “Arms are trafficked along the trans-Saharan route, which includes Libya, Algeria, Niger and Ménaka [in eastern] Mali,” he wrote in a February…

ADF STAFF The African Union in mid-February dealt a blow to China’s ejiao industry when it banned the slaughter of donkeys for their skin in all 54 countries, earning praise from animal rights organizations. Collagen extracted from donkey skin produces ejiao, a traditional Chinese remedy used by people with anemia, low blood cell counts or reproductive issues, despite no scientific evidence that it works. It also is used in snacks and beauty products such as face creams. The collagen is extracted by boiling donkey hides that are mixed with herbs and other ingredients to produce bars, pills and liquids. Marketed to the…

ADF STAFF Ghana banned rosewood logging in 2019. Despite that, logging continues, driven by China’s insatiable appetite for the lumber and the substantial amounts of money Chinese logging companies spread around in some of Ghana’s poorest communities. As recently as 2021, Ghana exported more than $2 million worth of endangered rosewood logs to China. A Chinese logging interest in Ghana’s Yipala community operated until late 2021, according to experts who visited the site. In April 2023, investigators with GH Environment found illegal rosewood logging underway in Damongo, the capital of Ghana’s Savannah region. By some estimates, more than 6 million…

ADF STAFF M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have acquired high-tech weaponry not typical of such militias, raising questions about whether Southern African Development Community (SADC) troops might find themselves outgunned as they attempt to help bring the rebels to heel. The attempted downing of a United Nations observation drone about 70 kilometers north of Goma in February was the most recent sign that M23 fighters possess military-grade weapons beyond the small arms most common to such groups. In that incident, the U.N. observed a surface-to-air missile (SAM) battery later identified as a Chinese-made WZ551…

ADF STAFF Nigeriens flooded the streets of their capital, Niamey, to celebrate when their military-led government announced its exit from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in January. But all is not well in the Republic of Niger. The country’s recent $22 million debt default is one of many damaging side effects of its July 2023 military coup. “Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso withdrawing from ECOWAS amounts to a colossal act of economic self-sabotage,” Nigerian analyst Bulama Bukarti wrote on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, on January 28. “This imprudent decision was driven solely…

ADF STAFF The deaths of two South African Soldiers deployed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have caused some observers to ask whether the Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission to rein in M23 rebels in North Kivu is properly equipped to do the job. The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) Soldiers died when a mortar landed in their base in the eastern DRC. Three others were injured. They were part of a 2,900-member South African deployment, aided by 2,100 additional Soldiers from Malawi and Tanzania, that came to the aid of the DRC’s armed forces (FARDC)…

ADF STAFF Anesthesiologist Dr. Arouna Louré was seeing patients when armed soldiers suddenly burst into the operating room of his hospital in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. “They made me understand they could make me leave using the gentle or the violent method,” the 38-year-old told the BBC. The soldiers put him in a van and took him to a military training camp hundreds of miles away where he was conscripted, given minimal military training and deployed to the front lines of the country’s brutal war against multiple violent extremist groups. Louré was abducted in September 2023. He served for about…

ADF STAFF Despite the deteriorating security and economic landscape in Burkina Faso, there is a clear reason why the ruling military junta remains popular: Russian propaganda and disinformation. It’s the same reason why a recent deployment of notorious Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, now known as the Africa Corps, to the capital, Ouagadougou, enjoys the same level of approval, despite the group’s history of atrocities against civilians in Africa. “Russia has effectively seized opportunities to manipulate citizen frustrations through disinformation campaigns,” Torianna Eckles, of the Wilson Center think tank, wrote in a January 22 opinion piece. “In Burkina Faso, Russian-generated disinformation…

ADF STAFF Terrorism-related deaths across Africa jumped in 2023, with most of the violence in a handful of countries while the rest of the continent saw terrorism deaths decline. Overall, terrorism-related deaths in Africa grew 20% in a year, from 19,412 in 2022 to 23,322 in 2023. The most recent count is almost twice the death toll from 2021, according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS). At the same time, the number of terrorist attacks dropped by 5% to just under 6,560, compared to 2022. That marks the first time attacks have trended downward…