ADF

ADF STAFF Benin became the first African nation to commit to publicly share data about fishing vessels in its waters when it partnered with Global Fishing Watch (GFW) in May. Benin will establish a vessel-monitoring system (VMS) and share its data through GFW’s map. Until Benin’s VMS system is established, the partnership will help track all fishing vessels operating in Beninese waters using an automatic identification system (AIS), and in adjacent waters outside Benin’s exclusive economic zone. “Through our partnership with Global Fishing Watch, we can strengthen our ability to monitor fishing activity, enforce the law and demonstrate our commitment…

ADF STAFF In the months since the junta ruling Mali invited Russia’s Wagner Group into the country, more than 450 people have died in military actions carried out by Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) in partnership with Wagner mercenaries, according to reports by the United Nations and others. “Malian Armed Forces, supported on certain occasions by foreign military elements, increased military operations to combat terrorism … some of which sometimes ended in serious allegations of violations of human rights,” the U.N.’s Malian mission, known as MINUSMA, said in a report. Mali’s experience is being repeated in other countries: Anywhere the Wagner…

ADF STAFF After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, prices for food and other goods skyrocketed around the globe. Parts of Africa, where food insecurity already was exacerbated by COVID-19 and severe droughts, were hardest hit. In response, the U.S. government pledged in May to provide an additional $215 million in emergency aid to Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Many African nations rely on Russia and Ukraine for wheat, fertilizer and vegetable oil imports, but the war has disrupted global markets and supply chains, causing food prices to soar. In East Africa, one person…

ADF STAFF Bernardino Rafael is not prone to hyperbole, but his recent comments about the war on terrorism in northern Mozambique were optimistic. The general commander of the Mozambican police force was speaking to Rwandan troops at their post near the town of Chai when he extolled their coordinated efforts with state forces. “We are hitting the enemy hard,” he said on May 13. “We aren’t saying that we’ve come to the end, but we’re almost there.” Indeed, after suffering through a bloody extremist uprising for years, Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province is seeing signs of progress. Militants, now known as…

ADF STAFF Already caught in the crossfire of multiple violent extremist organizations, civilians in Burkina Faso are saying they need to be protected by their security forces, not victimized by them. Since 2016, rival Islamist terror groups affiliated with the Islamic State group and with al-Qaida have spilled into the country from the north with deadly consequences. Recent government counterterrorism efforts, however, similarly have been fraught with accusations of civilian deaths and abuses. In April, a coalition of 17 Burkinabe civil society organizations released a statement declaring the “need to make human rights a central issue in the fight against…

ADF STAFF The Islamic State terrorist organization has been decimated in Iraq and Syria in recent years and is now seeking to expand operations in Africa, taking aim at some of the continent’s most fragile regions. African countries now account for nearly half of all deaths at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates worldwide, according to Nasser Bourita, Morocco’s minister of foreign affairs. IS first arrived in the Sahel in 2015. Since then, terrorist groups under the IS umbrella have expanded their range from the desert interior to the Atlantic Coast. The groups have killed or…

ADF STAFF Madagascar recently signed a charter allowing it to join a Southern African Development Community (SADC) initiative aimed at combatting illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and other sea crimes. The charter will provide a legal framework to establish and operate the SADC Regional Fisheries Monitoring Control Surveillance Coordination Centre, which will coordinate measures related to fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance in the region. Through the center, participating nations would help one another collect and exchange information, develop a regional fishing vessel register, and monitor vessel activity. During a signing ceremony, Paubert Mahatante, Madagascar’s minister of fisheries and blue economy,…

ADF STAFF Security experts have warned for several years that the extremist violence engulfing the Sahel inevitably would spread south to the coast. Four countries along the Gulf of Guinea — Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo — responded by collaborating on regional security and moving some of their defense forces to the north, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Mali. One after another, however, the coastal countries are seeing their fears realized. In 2021, there were 13 Islamist militant attacks in Côte d’Ivoire, five in Benin and one in Togo, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data…

ADF STAFF As a Ghanaian Air Force helicopter thundered overhead, members of the Ghana Navy Special Boat Squadron (SBS) rappelled down to the deck of a ship floating just offshore. With weapons drawn, they began searching the ship for suspected pirates. The assault was a drill — part of annual training exercises for SBS members in partnership with U.S. and Danish militaries. The assault drill and others, such as close-quarter combat and emergency medical training, are designed to strengthen Ghana’s marine security, build its ability to defend its territorial waters and coordinate more closely with its neighbors. “The tripartite collaboration…

ADF STAFF Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba sat silently wearing a red beret and a stern expression in the Ouagadougou television studio on January 24 as Burkina Faso’s military spokesman announced the coup that deposed the country’s democratically elected president. The junta, which called itself “the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration,” seized power, and Damiba was named its president. The spokesman said Damiba cited the country’s failing security as the primary reason for overthrowing President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. One month later, Damiba’s junta gave him the title of President of Burkina Faso, and with it the job of…