ADF

Issimail Chanfi, permanent representative of Comoros to the United Nations, spoke during the Africa Dialogue Series 2021 on May 28, 2021. The U.N.’s Office of the Special Adviser on Africa sponsored the event. The theme of the series was “Cultural identity and ownership: reshaping mindsets.” Chanfi’s comments have been edited to fit this format. During this month of the Africa Dialogue Series we have witnessed that a new narrative is indeed possible if only we give voice to African experts. We have shown the world that Africa is a continent full of innovators who are ready to face emerging challenges…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE At twilight, tens of thousands of bats darken the skies over Abidjan’s business quarter as they squeak their way between buildings in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic hub. The scene is a feature of the city’s Plateau district. But now a range of human perils threatens the little mammals, conservationists say. As night falls, the bats head for the nearby Banco forest, which was made a national park in 1953. There, the bats gorge all night on insects, fruit and flowers, said Magloire Niamien, a biologist and bat specialist at the University of Korhogo in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Niamien said…

VOICE OF AMERICA Malaria kills more than 400,000 people each year, and most victims are in Africa. Now Target Malaria, an international group of scientists, is working in Burkina Faso on a genetic solution. Abdoulaye Diabate of the country’s Research Institute for Science and Health said Target Malaria hopes to develop a genetic tool to modify mosquitoes so their offspring will be only male. Any females they mate with after release also will produce just males. Since only female mosquitoes spread malaria, the disease should drop off quickly along with their population. In the village of Bana, where the genetically…

Affectionately called the “Baba of Africa” or “Africa’s father,” Olusegun Obasanjo has spent time as a military officer, statesman, peacemaker and human rights advocate. Born in 1937 in southwest Nigeria, he spent more than 20 years in the Armed Forces, rising to the rank of two-star general. He served as Nigeria’s head of state twice, from 1976 to 1979 and again from 1999 to 2007. In 1979, he became the first military ruler in Africa to hand power to a civilian government, and in 2007 he participated in Nigeria’s first peaceful transition of power from one civilian administration to another.…

ADF STAFF Arab Spring protests swept across North Africa and the Middle East in the early 2010s as citizens rose up in the face of years of autocratic rule. The protests produced a range of results, from the lasting chaos in Libya to a flirtation with democratic rule in neighboring Egypt. The Arab Spring’s reach extended into Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. It lit the fuse that exploded into the bloody Syrian civil war, which persists to this day. But in Tunisia, a nation of 12 million people nestled between Algeria and Libya, things were different. Those differences…

BY DR. HUMPHREY ASAMOAH AGYEKUM Photos by AFP/GETTY IMAGES In Africa, military interventions in politics are an ever-present threat. In recent years, military forces have staged coups in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, twice in Burkina Faso and twice in Mali. Yet, for nearly four decades Ghana has remained an island of relative stability in West Africa. Members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) have been praised for their high level of professionalism and their apolitical nature. This raises the question: How does the GAF manage to avoid involvement in coups? The answer is multifaceted. To understand the newfound professionalism of the Ghanaian military,…

Tanzanian Cpl. Ali Khamis Omary was serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, trying to halt the spread of Ebola. He and his colleagues had been sent to a camp in the eastern part of the country on a joint mission with peacekeepers from Malawi. Rebels attacked Omary and other peacekeepers on November 14, 2018. He was shot in the leg, and Malawian Pvt. Chancy Chitete rushed to help him, administering lifesaving first aid. Chitete dragged Omary to safety despite enemy fire, but he was shot and killed in the process. Thanks to…

ADF STAFF The Baba Ali, a Seychellois fishing vessel, was passing through the Seychelles exclusive economic zone (EEZ) when authorities intercepted it in May 2021. Through an operation coordinated by the Seychelles Air Force, Seychelles Coast Guard and its National Information Sharing and Coordination Centre, authorities boarded and inspected the vessel. What they found –– about $1.2 million worth of heroin and hashish –– signifies the magnitude of the regional trafficking threat. The drug seizure and the arrest of three Seychellois and four Indonesian nationals showed that the island state’s efforts to bolster maritime security were working, Seychellois Fisheries Minister…

ADF STAFF Aircraft from the Royal Moroccan Air Force and U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 3 flew over the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Atlantic Ocean on March 3, 2021, during exercise Lightning Handshake. The Eisenhower, named after a former U.S. president whose nickname was “Ike,” is the flagship of the IKE Carrier Strike Group (IKE CSG), which participated in the exercise. The training’s purpose was to improve the ability of the U.S. and Morocco to operate together across multiple warfare areas, including surface, anti-submarine and air-and-strike warfare; combined logistics support; and maritime interdiction operations. “On…

ADF STAFF As a brutal civil war raged in neighboring Liberia in 1991, Sierra Leone’s long-standing government corruption and weakness inched the nation closer and closer to catastrophe. When the forces of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) crossed the border that March, Sierra Leone soon found itself under attack on two fronts. As its Army battled the NPFL, Sierra Leone also came under attack from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a well-armed and well-funded rebel guerrilla group led by Foday Sankoh, a former Army corporal who found common cause with the invading Liberians. Civil war had come…