ADF

ADF STAFF Zamfara State Gov. Bello Matawalle says more than 30,000 bandits are operating across six states in northern Nigeria, including his own. Since the federal government designated armed bandits as terrorists, the use of force against these groups is now part of the country’s military strategy. One of Matawalle’s approaches in Zamfara, thought to be the epicenter of banditry in Nigeria, is to arm civilians. “The crisis defied all forms of solution,” he said in an April 1 news briefing. He directed the state police commissioner to issue 500 gun licenses in each of the 19 emirates in the…

ADF STAFF The recordings posted online in 2020 claimed to be Ghanaian President Nana Afuko-Addo endorsing several notorious conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic. There was one problem: The recordings were fake. Afuko-Addo’s office quickly rebutted the claims, and others online pointed out that the voice was not the president’s. But soon one recording had been heard more than 400,000 times in Nigeria alone. From the COVID-19 pandemic to local politics, fake news pollutes the flow of information across West Africa, with much of it targeting social media channels and their users. “Those involved do not mean well for the…

ADF STAFF After years of serving in the Senegalese Army, Gen. Mbaye Cissé wants to apply lessons he has learned and see more involvement from the public to deal with insecurity. Cissé, who has been director-general of the Dakar-based Centre des Hautes Etudes en Défense et de Sécurité (CHEDS) since July 2020, was a section commander in the Casamance region, where a conflict has been simmering since 1982. He participated in a recent webinar hosted by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies and CHEDS that focused on the strategic importance of using citizen-focused approaches to address security challenges. Cissé described…

ADF STAFF African nations that join the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC) to counter illegal fishing can harness Skylight, a maritime monitoring tool that tracks fishing vessels in real time and alerts authorities to suspicious behavior. The JAC is a new collaboration of organizations that brings data, technology and analytics to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. According to the Ocean Science Foundation, African nations lose an estimated $10 billion annually to illegal fishing, which also drives food insecurity. Launched by the Allen Institute for AI, Skylight already helps Gabon’s National Agency for National Parks defend marine protected areas. In…

Dr. Mark Duerksen is a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. His research focuses on Nigeria’s security landscapes and Africa’s unparalleled urbanization, along with the security challenges and opportunities that cities present. His projects at the center include tracking security-related news and creating analytic infographics. Africa Defense Forum (ADF) interviewed Duerksen via email. His remarks have been edited to fit this format. ADF: Are Nigeria’s mercenary groups actually working? It seems that many of them become as bad as the organizations they are set up to combat. For instance, a federal judge in Nigeria said the Bakassi…

There are no easy solutions to the decadelong security crisis in the Sahel. Extremist groups that first planted their flags in Mali during the political upheaval of 2012 have spread to destabilize parts of Burkina Faso and Niger. Terrorist attacks and armed conflict killed more than 6,200 people in these three countries in 2020, making it the most violent year on record for the region. The leaders of the Sahel-based extremist groups, most notably the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, now are intent on moving south toward the coast and infiltrating countries such as…

Brig. Gen. Oumarou Namata of Niger, the departing commander of the G5 Sahel Joint Force, spoke during a ceremony in Bamako, Mali, on July 30, 2021, as he handed over command to Division Gen. Oumar Bikimo of Chad. His remarks, originally made in French, have been edited to fit this format. The mandate of the Joint Force has just been renewed this month by the African Union’s Peace and Security Committee. It enters its fifth year having already made advances in its development process, notably in the operational domain and in forming partnerships. This comes despite the often difficult security…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE | photos by AFP/GETTY IMAGES Hundreds of children in Kipushi, a mining city in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), finally received birth certificates that allow them to attend school for free. Many of the children had worked alongside their parents in cobalt and copper mines. UNICEF provided school kits and financially supported administrative work by a local nongovernmental organization to obtain the birth certificates for about 500 children in August 2021. Children must provide certificates when registering for school. Parents should register children within 90 days of birth, says Kipushi’s chief prosecutor, Patrick N’Django Rwamo.…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE In the northern Senegalese city of Saint-Louis, excavators are ripping up the beach to lay giant basalt blocks in an 11th-hour effort to keep the sea at bay. When finished, a black sea wall will stretch 3.6 kilometers along the coast of the country’s former capital. Dire warnings about the risk of rising sea levels already are a grim reality in Saint-Louis, where seafront residents are abandoning their homes to the encroaching Atlantic Ocean. The sea wall is a stopgap. Some are skeptical that the historic city of 237,000 people can be saved at all. Saint-Louis stands only…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE During the week, Dr. Georges Bwelle, 49, specializes in intestinal surgery at the main hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. On weekends, though, he takes to the road. He leads a team of volunteers that crams into a minibus and heads out into remote areas. The tiny mobile clinic provides basic health care to those in need. Recently, his nongovernmental organization (NGO), called ASCOVIME, visited the prison at Nkongsamba, about 350 kilometers northwest of Yaoundé. Team members examined nearly 500 prisoners and their family members. Volunteers brought in equipment, transforming a room near the cells into a small field…