ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Kenyan distance runner Eliud Kipchoge made history by completing a marathon in under two hours. His feat was greeted with joy and pride in his home country. “I am happy today because he has won in Kenya and in the world. I thank him so much for this, for me, for Kenya and the world,” said Kipchoge’s mother, Janet Rotich, who watched in her home village, Kapsisiywa. Kipchoge’s run in Vienna, Austria, was broadcast live on all of Kenya’s television stations. The run is not an official world record because of the use of runners who helped pace…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS “Painting is for lazy people,” Ajarb Bernard Ategwa’s father would tell him as a child. Daydreaming and doodling in his schoolbooks would often get him scolded. But the Cameroonian artist, now 30, got the last laugh. Ategwa says his vivid paintings of life in Cameroon’s biggest city, Douala, sell for up to $26,000.  “It’s the only thing I know how to do,” he said. “So painting is my life. At times when I’m angry, painting calms me down.” He never formally trained as an artist and says he has used the same bold approach to color…

VOICE OF AMERICA Bayern Munich, the champion of Germany’s Bundesliga, the top tier of the nation’s football league system, has signed an agreement to open its first football school in Africa, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Bayern Munich representatives said they were inspired by the young football players and fans in Ethiopia, which is ranked 150th worldwide, according to the international soccer governing body, FIFA. “Two-thirds of the Ethiopian population is younger than 25 years. We will support the Ethiopian Football Federation in terms of young development and coaches’ education programs,” said Holger Quest, team leader of media operations at Bayern…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE After two decades without a national airline, Uganda commemorated the return of Uganda Airlines with a flight from Entebbe to Nairobi, Kenya.  The airline initially will fly to seven destinations, including Nairobi; Mogadishu, Somalia; Juba, South Sudan; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; said Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda during a ceremony at Entebbe International Airport. The country has acquired two new Bombardier CRJ 900 jets and is expected to receive another two in 2019. It will add two Airbus A330-800 planes in 2020 for long-haul flights. Uganda Airlines is launching into increasingly crowded East African skies. Rwanda and Tanzania…

REUTERS | Photos by OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, RWANDA Rwanda’s Mara Group has launched two smartphones, describing them as the first “made in Africa” models and boosting the country’s ambitions to become a regional technology hub.  The Mara X and Mara Z will use Google’s Android operating system and cost $190 and $130, respectively.  They will compete with Samsung, whose cheapest branded smartphone costs $54, and nonbranded phones, which cost about $37. Mara Group CEO Ashish Thakkar said it was targeting customers willing to pay more for quality.  “We are actually the first who are doing manufacturing,” Thakkar said. “We…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE | photos by AFP/GETTY IMAGES Thousands of African-American tourists have flocked to Ghana as part of the “Year of Return” commemorating the 400th anniversary of the slave trade.  “This has been about understanding my history and my roots. Where I came from,” U.S. preacher Roxanne Caleb said. “I am very thankful I came here as part of the Year of Return.” Cape Coast Castle, 150 kilometers from the capital, Accra, is a major magnet for visitors.  The white-washed fort lined with cannons was one of dozens of prisons studding the Atlantic coast in which slaves were held before…

ADF STAFF A joint rescue team from the Cameroonian Navy and its Rapid Intervention Battalion oil field protection group saved more than 100 people after a shipwreck. A storm caused a ferry, the Austerheim, to capsize near the island of Bakassi during the night of August 25, 2019.  Although rescuers responded quickly, 17 people drowned. The ferry was en route from Calabar, Nigeria, to Tiko, Cameroon, and officials said it had about 130 people aboard. “According to the latest information, the boat was overloaded and hit a sandbar before turning around,” the Cameroonian Ministry of Defense said in a statement. …

VOICE OF AMERICA Gen. Odowaa Yusuf Rageh has been named commander of the Somali National Army (SNA). At 32, he is the youngest person to hold the title. He attended military training in Uganda and became an instructor to new recruits. He won accolades for bravery in 2019 when he personally led a charge to repel an al-Shabaab attack in Lower Shabelle.   “His presence changed the morale of the Soldiers, changed the fight; they fought bravely because of the commander,” said SNA Gen. Dahir Aden Elmi. “He led the defense and the charge. They won with his operation plan.”…

ADF STAFF Nigeria is making progress in deradicalizing former Boko Haram fighters.  The plan known as Operation Safe Corridor was unveiled in 2015 at a Nigerian National Security Council meeting when the government offered former Boko Haram members a chance at rehabilitation and reintegration.  German news outlet Deutsche Welle (DW.com) visited the Bulumkutu Rehabilitation Centre in Maiduguri where 151 former Boko Haram fighters were being handed over to the state government in August 2019. Deradicalization includes psychotherapy, interaction with imams who discredit extremist preaching and other counseling.  The coordinator of Operation Safe Corridor, Brig. Gen. Bamidele Mathew Shafa, told DW.com…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Senior military officers from five African Great Lakes countries met to discuss strategies to respond to violence plaguing the region. Senior officers from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda gathered in the eastern town of Goma, in the DRC’s North Kivu province. DRC Armed Forces spokesman Gen. Leon-Richard Kasonga said the meeting was meant to compare strategy and discuss “sharing efforts” to promote peace. Eastern DRC and its borders have been an area of conflict for nearly a quarter century. The region is troubled by militia groups that evolved from the two…