ADF

ADF STAFF With piracy increasing in the waters of West Africa, Nigeria recently launched its Deep Blue Project, a multipronged approach to confronting piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. The $195 million project brings together a mix of ships, aircraft and drones to patrol the busy shipping lanes off Nigeria’s coast. It will identify potential problem areas and respond quickly to piracy. It comes after the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offences Act passed by Nigerian legislators in 2019 that strengthened the state’s ability to tackle piracy. “This assemblage of new maritime security assets comes at a critical time when global discussions…

ADF STAFF Every time the Veracruz, a 108-meter refrigerated cargo ship, crossed the sea border from Namibia to Angola, it seemed to disappear. Possibly engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, its captain simply turned off its automatic identification system (AIS) tracking signal so authorities wouldn’t know its location. Known as “going dark,” the practice is especially common among trawlers engaged in transshipment, or the illegal transfer of fish from one vessel to another, which the Veracruz seemed to be involved in, according to a report by E&T, an engineering and technology magazine. IUU fishing costs West African nations $2.3…

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) is a peacekeeping operation established at the time of South Sudan’s independence in July 2011. In January 2017, David Shearer of New Zealand became head of the mission and served for more than four years until April 15, 2021. Shearer spent nearly 20 years working for the U.N., managing aid programs to Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq. ADF spoke with Shearer by phone in March 2021. The interview has been edited to fit this format. ADF: You live and work in South Sudan. What’s the mission like? SHEARER: It’s…

Mahamadou Issoufou spoke at the opening of the Extraordinary Session of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Authority of Heads of State and Government on April 23, 2020, via videoconference. He was president of the Republic of Niger and chairman of the ECOWAS authority at the time. His speech has been edited to fit this format. A few months ago, no one could imagine that everything would stop so quickly: work, the economy, social life. No one could imagine that all land, sea and air borders to all countries of the world would be closed. These measures were…

REUTERS Rhino poaching fell 63% year-on-year in Namibia due to intensified intelligence operations and tougher sentences and fines for poachers. Elephant poaching also decreased, with two incidents reported as of August 2020 compared with 13 in 2019, the environment ministry said. Namibia is home to the second-largest white rhino population in the world after South Africa, according to nonprofit Save the Rhino. Namibia also holds one-third of the world’s remaining black rhinos. Rhino poaching has plagued Southern Africa for decades, especially in neighboring South Africa and Botswana, leading to anti-poaching programs such as dehorning and strict policing. Namibia has increased…

AFRICAN UNION The African Union has announced a new initiative that will help the continent better meet the health challenges of the future. The Kofi Annan Global Health Leadership Programme is a new AU effort under the auspices of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). It is named in memory of Kofi Atta Annan, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations (1997-2006), Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founding chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation. Annan worked tirelessly to promote improved health in Africa, particularly with regard to HIV/AIDS. He died in 2018 at age 80. “In 2014…

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION Togo has received validation from the World Health Organization (WHO) for having eliminated human African trypanosomiasis, or “sleeping sickness,” as a public health problem, becoming the first African country to reach this milestone. Parasites transmitted by tsetse flies cause sleeping sickness, and it is found in about three dozen Sub-Saharan African countries. If left untreated, sleeping sickness is almost always fatal. In 1995, about 25,000 cases were detected, about 300,000 cases were estimated to have gone undetected, and 60 million people were estimated to be at risk of infection. In 2019, fewer than 1,000 cases were found.…

ADF Staff Dr. John Nkengasong, a virologist, has been the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) since 2017 and has helped lead the continent’s response to Ebola, COVID-19, malaria and other health challenges since that time. He spoke to ADF from his office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2020. His remarks have been edited to fit this format. ADF: Countries are now preparing to acquire and distribute COVID-19 vaccines. You recently co-authored a piece for Nature urging the world not to “let history repeat itself” where African nations find themselves at the back…

ADF STAFF When the COVID-19 pandemic spread to Malawi in early April 2020, the nation known as the “warm heart of Africa” for the kindness of its citizens faced a potential crisis. The fast-spreading respiratory disease could easily have overwhelmed the low-income country of more than 20 million people. “COVID-19 could have a disastrously high toll in Malawi,” said Maria Jose Torres Macho, United Nations resident coordinator for Malawi. “Even a fairly low number of cases could overwhelm the health system, cause food shortages and reverse the path of progress the country has been on in recent years.” By early…

ADF STAFF As national economies struggle to reopen from pandemic lockdowns, the African Union is looking to homegrown technology to help businesses while tracking the potential for new outbreaks.  One technology is a smartphone app called PanaBIOS. It lets governments monitor people’s movement — particularly those who may have tested positive for COVID-19 — and curb large gatherings that might turn into superspreader events. The widespread use of PanaBIOS is crucial to the AU’s planned opening of a continentwide free-trade area in 2021. That project, which will let people and goods move across open borders, will require a way to…