ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE There are few museums in the world with as wide a scope as the National Museum of Niger. It has displays covering art, history, dinosaurs, nuclear energy, craftwork and music as well as live animals, for it also is a zoo. The cultural gem of the country, the 24-hectare museum survives on a budget that is just a fraction of those of its wealthy counterparts. Yet it charges a rock-bottom entrance fee — about 10 cents — so that even the most impoverished can walk in and see exceptional things, including wild animals. “It’s Niger’s mirror, its social…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE After the 2019 revolution, Sudanese filmmakers suddenly enjoyed greater openness and have won multiple international awards. But the artists have yet to receive the same recognition at home.  Cinema languished in Sudan through three decades of authoritarian rule by Omar al-Bashir. But Sudanese took to the streets to demand freedom, peace and social justice, and Bashir’s rule came to an end in April 2019. “We started realizing how much our society needs our dreams,” said director Amjad Abu Alala. His 2019 film You Will Die at Twenty was Sudan’s first Oscar entry and the first Sudanese film broadcast…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Libya is playing league football for the first time since April 2019 when civil war ended the season prematurely. The new season kicked off in 2021 without issues, but security is precarious. A cease-fire is in place in the country.  “Libyan football has suffered greatly in the absence of the league, and its return will be a positive for the Libyan national team ahead of our upcoming matches,” said Abdul Nasser Ahmed, secretary-general of the Libyan Football Federation. “This has been a joint effort by all the stakeholders who have encouraged this move and have been…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Nigerian animator Ridwan Moshood was so determined to learn how to make cartoons, he spent hours in internet cafes in Lagos, watching YouTube lessons and taking notes. “I would go to a cyber cafe, watch video tutorials and write down whatever I’d learnt,” he says. Today, the 26-year-old is a rising star in Africa’s blossoming animation scene. In 2018, he was recognized by the Cartoon Network Africa Creative Lab for his animation Garbage Boy and Trash Can. He has since formed a production company, and he now hopes to have his latest idea, a cartoon set in…

ADF STAFF After three decades of civil war, Angola is left with a deadly legacy: land mines. Although fighting ended in 2002, Angola remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Land mine explosions killed 76 people in 2019. An estimated one-fifth of the country’s population lives in areas with mines, which affect every aspect of their lives. “Land mines not only kill and maim innocent people, but also isolate communities from basic needs such as water sources and travel routes and productive land crucial for growing crops and grazing livestock,” the demining group APOPO said. The…

ADF STAFF Ghana opened a security operations center (SOC) to monitor and respond to cyberattacks.  The center, run by the National Information Technology Agency under the Ministry of Communications, will protect data from Ghana’s governmental ministries, departments and agencies.  “The SOC will offer services, including network monitoring, which will ensure that government networks are monitored consistently in real time and will contribute to the identification of patterns and prioritization of problems for optimized resource and threat management,” Communications Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful told GhanaWeb. The center is expected to partner with the national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and the National…

ADF STAFF Conflicts caused by the annual cattle migration are common in South Sudan. Cows sometimes eat or destroy the crops of farmers, who may react by killing the cattle. This escalates to warfare between families or villages. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) is supporting an effort that travels from village to village facilitating dialogue to resolve disputes.  “Our objective in coming here today is to encourage you to opt for dialogue to resolve any disagreements instead of resorting to violence,” said Joseph Ngoriakou, UNMISS civil affairs officer, as he addressed a gathering in Warrap State in…

ADF STAFF The ongoing fight between government forces and rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) has taken an explosive turn with the addition of land mines and improvised bombs, putting civilians directly in harm’s way. In the latest demonstration of how the situation in the CAR is escalating, a roadside bomb in September exploded under a relief convoy in the nation’s northwest, killing one aid worker. A United Nations analysis found that Russian mercenaries known as the Wagner Group are driving the increased violence. Wagner forces are working with the CAR government under President Faustin-Archange Touadéra to put down…

ADF STAFF A huge net swings across an industrial fishing trawler in Ghana. It opens, and the deck fills with a pile of glistening, silver-scaled fish. The ship’s double-net system, which helps catch larger amounts of smaller fish, is illegal in Ghana, as is the presence of the foreign-owned vessel. “Sometimes we select the biggest ones (fish) and label them,” said a Ghanaian fisherman who works on foreign trawlers and spoke anonymously to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). “If we get 2,000 to 2,500 slabs, we call the canoes who collect them from the vessels.” On industrial trawlers frozen fish…

ADF STAFF Kenyan Army Lt. Col. Irene Machangoh looked around the room, then looked at the women seated at her table and noticed something they had in common that drew them to serve their countries. “We all believe there is power in the uniform we wear,” the foreign liaison officer to the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) said at the gathering in Djibouti. The uniform, she said, is a symbol that helps service members — particularly women — visualize their strength. Empowering and encouraging women was one of many objectives at the inaugural Women in Security Symposium in…