ADF

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 His remarks, originally made in French, have been edited to fit this format.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…

ADF STAFF | Photos by AFP/Getty Images Mass atrocities, forced displacement, public executions: Terror. It has been a fact of life in parts of Africa’s Sahel region since extremists gained a foothold in Mali in 2012 and then spread their reach beyond its borders. Despite efforts by regional security forces and global partners, the violence shows no sign of stopping. By the end of 2021, there was an 18% increase in violent events and a 14% decrease in fatalities compared to the record-setting violence of 2020 in the Sahel, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED),…

ADF STAFF As extremists launched murderous assaults on Burkinabe churches in 2019, neighboring Ghana took note. In preceding years, Islamist-backed terrorism and violence, born in Mali and spreading south, had infiltrated Burkina Faso and crept ever closer to Ghana’s northern border. Although hundreds of kilometers north of the border, the church attacks still were a source of unease. Their brutality toward people of faith and houses of worship was striking. In Silgadji, Burkina Faso, gunmen rushed in on motorcycles and killed a pastor, two of his sons and three other congregants in April 2019, the BBC reported. Less than a month…

ADF STAFF Africa agriculture experts are calling for countries across the continent to increase their capacity for local food production to avoid future food shocks like the one created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The invasion that began in February shut down exports of grain, fertilizer and other key agricultural components from both countries, which are two of the world’s leading exporters of foodstuffs. As a result, prices for bread and other staples spiked across Africa, setting off a nutritional crisis in some countries. Africa does $4.5 billion in business with Ukraine, the great majority of that in grain imports.…

ADF STAFF West African governments should consider renegotiating deals with foreign distant-water fishing companies that often offer little benefit to either party, according to a maritime expert at Duke University. Analyzing 2017 data, John Virdin, director of the ocean and coastal policy program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke in the United States, noted that most bottom trawlers in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone are owned by Chinese companies. The foreign trawlers notoriously engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. In Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, foreign industrial fishing fleets generated little or…

ADF STAFF Recent media campaigns by the Islamic State group have encouraged fighters to pursue hijra, or migration, to Africa and foster extremism. Experts predict more terrorism on the continent. Since the Islamic State terrorist group’s defeat in Iraq and Syria, the organization has shown an intention to revive itself through multiple branches in Africa. If the group’s promotion of Africa as a destination for extremism “proves to be sustained and successful, the group may continue to build its ranks, alliances, and reach in the region, which could in turn result in more violence and pose a threat to any form…