ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Something extraordinary lay inside the wooden drawer in an office behind Nairobi National Museum. It’s a monstrous jawbone with colossal fangs — the only known remains of a prehistoric mega-carnivore declared to be a new species in 2019. “This is one of a kind,” said Kenyan paleontologist Job Kibii, holding up the 23-million-year-old bones of Simbakubwa kutokaafrika. For nearly 40 years, the specimens — proof of the existence of Africa’s largest-ever predator, a 1,500 kilogram meat eater that dwarfed lions — sat in a drawer in downtown Nairobi. How did these fossils, first excavated on a dig in…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE South African fashion designer Innocent Molefe was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in 2015. Three years later it developed into a multidrug-resistant strain requiring painful injections and heaps of pills. Three months after the first round of treatment, he relapsed and started a second round. At the end of it, he still wasn’t cured. Thanks to a new treatment approved in August 2019 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he is clear of the disease and back to work. “I was willing to beat TB, and I’m living proof,” he said. Of the more than 1.6 million TB…

ADF STAFF The Sahel, a semiarid region stretching from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Eritrea and the Red Sea, has been a dividing line in Africa for centuries.  It separates the Sahara to the north from lusher savannahs to the south and stretches 5,408 kilometers and covers 3,053,210 square kilometers. Its terrain includes plateaus and mountain ranges, grasslands and shrublands. There is little surface water.  The region stays mostly hot and dry year-round with winds and sparse rainfall, usually no more than 200 to 600 millimeters between May and September. Even then, most rain falls in its southern extremes. …

An Interview With Brig. Gen. Oumarou Namata, Commander of the G5 Sahel Joint Force ADF STAFF Brig. Gen. Oumarou Namata of Niger was named commander of the G5 Sahel Joint Force in July 2019. He is the third commander of the force, which is composed of up to 5,000 Soldiers and other personnel from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.  Brig. Gen. Oumarou Namata of Niger was named commander of the G5 Sahel Joint Force in July 2019. He is the third commander of the force, which is composed of up to 5,000 Soldiers and other personnel from Burkina…

Sahel-Based Extremist Groups Shatter the Calm of Burkina Faso  ADF STAFF Burkina Faso’s Splendid Hotel promotes itself to international visitors by listing the amenities many have come to expect. Room service. A front desk staffed 24 hours a day. Proximity to restaurants and local attractions. Free Wifi. Business travelers, diplomats and vacationers all have made the Splendid their temporary home when visiting the capital, Ouagadougou. Its rooms offered a natural sense of calm and safety. That was the feeling that a half-dozen al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb militants sought to shatter in January 2016 when they laid siege to the…

ADF STAFF Sometimes, scenes of serenity and calm can be found close to anxiety and unrest. This young Congolese boy would seem to have found just such a spot. He rested along a road connecting the small town of Rudaya, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the bustling city of Goma, the capital of the troubled North Kivu province, in August 2019. That same month, the Ebola virus, long the scourge of the region, had been contained in Goma, according to NPR.org. Just more than a month since the deadly hemorrhagic fever spread to Goma, national and international health…

After Five Years, France’s Operation Barkhane Sees Progress Toward Peace in the Sahel ADF STAFF  |  Photos By Reuters Operation Serval marked a high point for France’s military in the modern era. The 18-month mission began in January 2013 at the request of Mali’s government as extremist groups pushed south and threatened to overrun the capital, Bamako. The 4,000-person French effort used a combination of ground forces, aerial bombardments, armored divisions and special operators to halt the advance, liberate all major cities in Mali’s north, and decimate the extremist leadership. Three of the five top terror leaders in Mali were…

Extremism in Mali has Shifted to the Central Region, Where One Group Feeds on Ethnic and Cultural Tensions ADF STAFF Mali has been a cauldron of violence since early 2012, when a Tuareg rebellion and military coup threw the nation into sustained chaos. Unrest that began in the north prompted an intervention by French and Chadian forces, as well as a huge United Nations peacekeeping operation that continues today. These forces reversed or halted rebel advances into major cities and toward the capital, Bamako. Since 2015, however, violence has intensified and shifted its center of gravity to central Mali, primarily…

Radio shows, WhatsApp groups, after-school programs and even comic books take aim at radical groups ADF STAFF The social media app TikTok is aimed at teenagers, who create and share 15-second videos. It has 500 million users globally, making it one of the world’s most popular apps. ISIS sees its possibilities as a propaganda tool.  In October 2019, TikTok began taking down accounts that the extremist group was using to recruit followers. The Wall Street Journal reported that the videos featured corpses being paraded down streets, along with ISIS fighters carrying guns. TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, said it permanently…

The Sahel’s Harsh Terrain Is Fertile Ground for Recruiting Youths. Groups and Governments Must Offer Alternatives. ADF STAFF Life in much of the Sahel is hard. The United Nations estimates that roughly 80% of the Sahel’s farmland is degraded. Droughts and floods are growing longer and more frequent, undermining food production. It’s one of the poorest regions on Earth, with 44% of its children lacking access to primary education. Only a third of the population can read and write. Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for the Sahel, said the region’s governments must spend a significant amount on their growing…