ADF

ADF STAFF Cheap, widely available drone technology has the potential to revolutionize medicine delivery, crop treatment and surveillance across Africa. But where innovators see an opportunity to improve lives, extremist groups see a chance to destroy them. In the Middle East, terror groups have begun weaponizing off-the-shelf drones to attack civilian and military targets. Now, experts are warning, that deadly tactic could be coming to Africa. “For $2,000 you can breach any fence in the world,” Dedrone CEO Aaditya Devarakonda said, describing drones to Forbes magazine. “It’s the most asymmetric threat out there.” Dedrone secures airspace to protect organizations from…

ADF STAFF More than 30 websites in Mozambique, including the Defense Ministry’s, went down February 21, 2022, after being targeted by hackers. An image of a man wearing a headscarf and holding a machine gun appeared on the site along with the words “hacked by Yemeni hackers.” The targets included the portals of the national disaster management, roads administration and water agencies, as well as the Defense Ministry and the National Institute of Land Transport. Officials said there was no loss of information or leak of citizens’ personal data but noted that it was the country’s first cyberattack of that…

REUTERS In a tin shed off the backstreets of Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) capital, a barefoot 61-year-old Jean-Luther Misoko Nzalayala, known as Socklo, hacks with a machete at a lump of wood that is starting to resemble the neck of a guitar. Later, he hammers bits of white plastic from a chair into it as inlay to help guide players around the fretboard, and he uses threads of motorcycle brake cable as strings. For more than 40 years, the self-taught instrument-maker has used a variety of recycled materials and local hardwoods to create guitars. Socklo’s passion…

REUTERS Somali artisan Muse Mohamud Olosow carefully sorts through a huge pile of camel bones discarded by a slaughterhouse in Mogadishu, selecting pieces that he will carve into jewelry and ornate beads used by fellow Muslims while reciting prayers.     To Olosow’s knowledge, he is one of just four artisans in his country of 16 million people who work with camel bones. In 1978, in one of Somalia’s many periods of war and turmoil, gunmen killed dozens of craftsmen in Mogadishu and another town, he said. For years, he carved his bones secretly at home and then took them…

ADF STAFF Tunisian tennis player Ons Jabeur got the world’s attention when she won the French Open junior title in 2011. Now, she says, tennis is more than just a sport for her. Her home country has little in the way of tennis infrastructure and no established path for players to become professionals. Jabeur says she wants to change that. “I don’t play for myself anymore. I play for my country, my continent, my region,” Jabeur told The National, a United Arab Emirates newspaper. “Tennis for me is not just a sport. I try to set an example for people…

DEFENCEWEB Piracy and armed robbery at sea dropped to their lowest levels in 18 years in 2021. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) is crediting “vigorous action” by authorities in protecting seafarers. In 2021, the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre received reports of 132 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships. There were 115 vessels boarded, 11 attempted attacks, five vessels fired on and one vessel hijacked. The Gulf of Guinea remained the world’s piracy hot spot. IMB Director Michael Howlett welcomed the reduction in incidents while urging coastal states to stay attuned to the risk and “robustly” address crime in…

ADF STAFF Kenya is building a DNA database of its marine species to conserve its sea resources amid widespread illegal fishing. The exercise involves harvesting species and cataloging them to help the government prosecute illegal fishing cases. Since the program started in 2022, Kenya has produced bar codes for about 115 species, including sharks, rays, crustaceans and mollusks. “Kenya has more than 6,000 commercial species and for years we could not claim any illegally harvested fish originated from the country,” Thomas Mkare, a senior research scientist at Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, told The East African. “With this scientific…

ADF STAFF A new system is helping retailers make sales across borders. The Pan-African Payments and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched in Accra, Ghana, in January 2022. It lets a buyer make a payment in one national currency so a seller in another country can be paid in their own local currency. It is designed to open up trade between African countries and process payments in less than two minutes. “There are 42 currencies in Africa. We want to make sure that a trader in Ghana can transfer Ghanaian cedi to a counterpart in Kenya, who will receive Kenyan shillings,” Wamkele Mene,…

ADF STAFF The Ghana Navy added four new offshore security vessels to its fleet as it seeks to protect the people and industries operating in its exclusive economic zone. Chief of Naval Staff Rear Adm. Issah Adam Yakubu received the Flex Fighter vessels during a ceremony at the Port of Takoradi on January 10, 2022. The 40-meter armored boats have space for more than 70 people and can carry 60 tons of cargo. The acquisition is part of a larger effort to protect offshore petroleum infrastructure from piracy. “I can assure you that in the next few months, we are…

ADF STAFF Kenya is building a counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) center in Embakasi to fight extremist threats in the region.  The new facility at the Humanitarian Peace Support School is funded by Germany and the United Kingdom. Since 2016, the C-IED wing has trained more than 1,700 military and police personnel from Kenya and 21 other countries. During a cornerstone-laying ceremony, experts from the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) demonstrated how to safely detonate an IED using a remote-controlled robot. They also showed how a water bottle can be used as an explosive device. “IEDs are killers; they do not only…