ADF

ADF STAFF Illegal fishing in West Africa has decimated marine life, threatened food security and left artisanal fishermen impoverished. The Confederation Africaine des Organisations Professionnelles de la Pêche Artisanale, or the African Confederation of Professional Organizations of Artisanal Fisheries (CAOPA), is working to change that. Established in 2010, the Senegal-based group is composed of 26 organizations from the region and around the continent, including those in Chad, Madagascar, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. The organization pushes for policies that combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, support sustainable fisheries, and instill greater transparency in fishing sectors. In January, CAOPA President Gaoussou Gueye repeated…

ADF STAFF When Cmdr. Prince Boateng, a Ghana native, returned home in March, he wore a U.S. Navy uniform. He was part of Obangame Express 2021 (OE21), a 13-day maritime security exercise sponsored by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and conducted by U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa. It included participation from 31 nations, 20 of which were African. Boateng, a reserve in the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet, understood firsthand the importance of the exercise hosted by the Ghana Navy. “We’re here to help the Ghanaian Navy and the navies in the Gulf of Guinea to work together to help them protect…

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…