ADF

ADF STAFF COVID-19 lockdowns led to a sharp drop in illegal wildlife trafficking, according to a new study. The study by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), done at the request of National Geographic magazine, found that international law enforcement agencies intercepted far less elephant ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales in 2020 compared to past years. Whether measured by weight or the number of seizures, trafficking between African countries and Asian countries — primarily China — dropped from nearly 1,000 seizures in 2019 to nearly half that in 2020. The study showed that authorities confiscated 18 metric tons…

For nearly two decades, the island country of Mauritius has aspired to be a technical and financial force on the world stage. The country’s ambition to become an “information society” dates to 2001, when it established the Business Parks of Mauritius Ltd as a government-owned company to develop information and communications technology. That led to the Cyber City Project in 2003. The goal of the project was to make Mauritius a preferred destination for business and professionals and “to create wealth and employment through the use of information technology,” reported The New Economy of the United Kingdom. Today, the project…

CAPT. NOLUKHANYO NDLELENI, LESOTHO DEFENCE FORCE Women are a crucial part of the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF). They make up about 16% of uniformed personnel, and they populate the ranks from junior levels to brigadier. But the women do not work only in military “support services.” They also are deployed in combat arms, and a majority work in infantry battalions. In addition to their many LDF duties, they show selfless service beyond the military by improving the lives of those in the community, especially children. The country of 30,000 square kilometers and about 2 million inhabitants has few global security…

Imagine the stress of being a health worker on duty during a deadly global pandemic. Personal protective equipment is in short supply. The disease, COVID-19, is highly contagious and can spread quickly. Those sickest with the virus require intensive medical care, up to and including ventilation. Health workers must cope with a lack of sleep and countless hours spent separated from their families.  At Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, health care workers are trying to do something about all of that pent-up stress. Nurses participated in a Zumba aerobic fitness program. Dozens of nurses in blue scrubs and face…

Things did not go as planned. On May 15, 2020, 10 pirates boarded the Chinese-flagged Hailufeng 11, subdued the 18 crew members and turned off its automatic identification system (AIS). The AIS transponder broadcasts the boat’s location, and the pirates believed switching it off made the vessel invisible to monitoring systems. But authorities were still watching. Having received an urgent call from the vessel’s owner, authorities were able to manually plot the last known location of the Hailufeng. They monitored its movements in real time using maritime domain awareness (MDA) tools shared by all countries in the region. As the…

ADF STAFF A Malawian court sentenced nine members of the Lin-Zhang wildlife trafficking gang to a total of more than 56 years in prison for dealing in endangered species in Africa. The gang, named for its husband-and-wife leaders, was one of the world’s most notorious wildlife trafficking syndicates and had been operating out of Malawi for 10 years, conservation groups told Voice of America.  Gang members were convicted of trafficking in rhino horn, ivory, hippopotamus teeth and pangolin scales. Such gangs and syndicates, also called McMafia groups, have proved to be enormously difficult to prosecute. But as some high-profile cases such…

ADF STAFF In The Gambia, rosewood is big business.  China merchants buy it — hundreds of thousands of metric tons over recent years — even though it’s illegal to harvest. Government officials are bribed to look the other way, loggers have told reporters. Senegalese and Gambian businessmen profit from it, as do some armed groups. The Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance, a separatist organization that has been fighting for the independence of Senegal’s Casamance region since 1982, is financed in part through timber trafficking. The Gambia, the smallest nation on mainland Africa, was stripped of most of its rosewood…

ADF STAFF A visitor to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, doesn’t need to go far to see China’s impact.  Passengers arrive at the glass-walled, $100 million Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. They drive past construction crews building the $1.2 billion Lusaka-Ndola carriageway. Football fans can watch a match at the 60,000-person, $94 million Heroes National Stadium. And when lights are switched on, the power is generated by the Kariba Dam and hydropower station on the Zambezi River. All of these projects were financed through Chinese loans and built by Chinese contractors. The projects are impossible to miss. What is harder to see…

EDWARD A. DURELL, P.E., SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR, U.S. AFRICA COMMAND Important technological innovations don’t typically come out of the blue. They are made possible by planning and support. At least 25 African countries have science, technology and innovation (STI) strategies. However, the African Academies of Sciences noted that these policies often focus solely on business and industrial development, and “social and environmental goals are not adequately integrated.”  Today, Africa’s research strengths are in agriculture, tropical medicine and infectious diseases, according to an STI implementation report. Widening the scope of research and investment could help unlock the vast scientific potential…

ADF STAFF A decades-old border dispute between Ethiopia and Sudan is threatening to turn into a border war. The sides clashed in December 2020 and have since positioned heavily armed forces in the fertile agricultural region of al-Fashqa. The countries share a 744-kilometer border, which has been disputed since the 19th century colonial era. In recent years, al-Fashqa has become a flashpoint. Located inside Sudan’s internationally recognized borders, al-Fashqa is isolated from the rest of the country by two rivers and does not have checkpoints or barriers at its border with Ethiopia. Sudan has asserted its rights to the territory,…