ADF

ADF STAFF Boaventura Martins has been fishing off the island of Maio for 40 years. Maio is part of the Cabo Verde archipelago, a group islands 620 kilometers off Africa’s west coast, where the waters once teemed with sharks, whales, rays, sea turtles, tuna and blue marlin. Years ago, Martins could pull hundreds of kilograms of fish from the turquoise sea on a given day, but now he says he’s fortunate to catch 10 kilograms per day. An influx of scuba divers and semi-industrial fishing trawlers are to blame for the declining fish populations, Martins and other artisanal fishermen told…

ADF STAFF Military analysts say the decision by Mali’s government to invite Russian Wagner Group mercenaries into the country could backfire and lead to further instability. Wagner’s track record in other countries shows its fighters will likely be unprepared for the Sahelian mission and try to wage a heavy-handed counterinsurgency campaign that could include human rights abuses and indiscriminate killing. According to Reuters, the Malian government led by Col. Assimi Goïta has agreed to pay the Wagner Group nearly $11 million per month to supply up to 1,000 fighters to train and advise Mali’s military, protect high-ranking government officials, and…

U.S. Africa Command Staff COVID-19 has slowed global commerce, but it has not stopped criminals intent on stealing Africa’s natural wealth. In fact, some poachers, loggers and maritime criminals see the virus as an opportunity. They are trying to take advantage of the lockdowns and diversion of security resources to expand their operations.  The huge scale of their crimes demands a unified response. About 11,000 square kilometers of rainforest in the Congo Basin are logged each year — most illegally — so wood can be sent overseas to feed furniture demand.  Off West Africa’s coast, fleets of foreign trawlers are…

Dr. Monica Juma is Kenya’s cabinet secretary for defence. She delivered this message to Kenyan troops serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) on October 14, 2020, in commemoration of Kenya Defence Forces Day. Her remarks have been edited to fit this format. I take this opportunity to salute our Soldiers who are deployed in various forward operating bases in Somalia on this auspicious day when we commemorate Kenya Defence Forces Day. The 14th of October is set aside in the Ministry of Defence to remember the ultimate sacrifice that your colleagues have paid in search for peace…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Six men in yellow biohazard suits walk in suffocating heat toward a cave in the heart of the Gabonese jungle. Their quest: to unlock new knowledge on how pathogens like COVID-19 leap the species barrier to humans. In the cave is their goal: a colony of bats. “Our job is to look for pathogens which could endanger humans and understand how transmission happens between species,” said Gael Maganga, a professor at the University of Franceville. Bats can host viruses that do not harm them but can be dangerous to humans, often crossing via other animals. COVID-19 is the…

VOICE OF AMERICA Cameroonian rights groups and activists are gratified that for the first time since 2016, parents no longer give children and teenagers toy guns as gifts during end-of-year feasts. In 2016, rights groups launched a campaign to ban toy guns, mostly imported from China, saying they lead to violence.  Instead, an educational toy such as an electronic workbook can help children learn the alphabet and words, not glorify violence. Such gifts have replaced toys like guns, knives and military vehicles that were in high demand and frequently given to children. During Cameroon’s Anglophone separatist crisis and Boko Haram…

ADF STAFF Enraged that foreign trawlers continuously deprive them of food and income, artisanal fishermen in Ghana are using a new smartphone app to detect and report illegal fishing. The app is called Dase, meaning “evidence” in Fante, a Ghanaian dialect. It was developed by the Environmental Justice Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that combats illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in West Africa. More than 100,000 fishermen and 11,000 canoes operate in Ghana, according to Steve Trent, executive director of the foundation. The app also is being developed for use in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ghana’s “marine fisheries support the livelihoods…

ADF STAFF The city of Nouadhibou, Mauritania, dangles from the mainland on a tiny peninsula. The city, the second largest in the nation, has nearly 120,000 residents and is a commercial center. Its harbor is the terminus of the Mauritania Railway line, which hugs the border with Western Sahara for more than half of its transnational length. But the railroad is not the only major infrastructure development in the city. Now Nouadhibou is home to a sprawling port, financed and modernized by a Chinese company, and just one in a series of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects emerging in…

ADF STAFF The Congo Basin rainforest is huge, second only to the Amazon. It sprawls across six nations, but it is shrinking. The basin is the home to countless species of plants and animals. It also is a key to the health of not just Africa, but the entire world, because it soaks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Deforestation in the Congo Basin is higher than in recent years. Nearly all primary forest lost in the basin in the past 15 years is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Still, compared to the rainforests in Asia and…

ADF STAFF Namibian tax authorities made a shocking discovery in 2017. Millions of dollars were leaving the country for China, but only a fraction was taxed.  The scheme was uncovered when Chinese businessman Jack Huang was arrested on charges of tax fraud, and officials discovered he was part of something much larger. Between 2013 and 2016 Huang, who operated a customs clearing business, had imported goods with a declared value of $14.3 million. The true value of the goods was more than 10 times higher. During the same period, he sent $209 million to China to pay for the goods.…