ADF

ADF STAFF Mamadou Dien huffed as he dragged his brightly painted fishing canoe onto the beach of a tiny village in Senegal. After four fruitless hours at sea, he held up his meager catch using only his thumbs and index fingers. “Today, the catch was not good,” he told Voice of America (VOA). “When it’s a good catch, you can make up to 70,000 francs (about $130) per day.” Nearby, a dejected Abdullah Dieta said he caught four grouper in three hours. “Our grandfathers tell us they could see the fish in abundance from here, from the beach,” Dieta told…

ADF STAFF Chad’s Armed Forces have launched a pilot project to create a self-sustaining food supply for the military by developing farms on military outposts. Graduates of the Chadian Army Farm School started the first on-base farm at the military’s training center in Koundoul. The tilled and irrigated farm, covering about 6.5 hectares within the military compound, has raised crops such as rice, okra, beans, melons, hibiscus, tomatoes, eggplant and onions. “The creation of the Land Forces Farm jump-started skills we learned at Koundoul,” Lt. Adam Eritero Cordubo, a 2019 graduate of the farm school, told ADF. “Our skills from…

ADF STAFF Experts point to China’s enormous fishing fleet as a cause of economic and environmental harm around the world. Since China began building its distant-water fishing fleet in the mid-1990s, it has become the world’s worst illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing offender, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime. IUU fishing is particularly harmful in West Africa where it has led to poverty and unemployment. According to Greenpeace, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone and The Gambia lost about $2.3 billion a year from 2010 to 2016 due to IUU fishing. In Ghana, illicit fishing threatens to…

ADF STAFF When he decided to defect from the extremist group al-Shabaab, Abdul was overwhelmed with fear. But he had a plan and a phone. His family found someone they trusted to take him to a safehouse. “At the beginning I walked by night, my feet lacerated by thorns,” Abdul, using a pseudonym to keep him safe, told the BBC. “I was petrified I would be stopped and sent back to certain death, by execution in a public place. “That is what al-Shabaab does to defectors.” The safehouse is part of Somalia’s Defector Rehabilitation Program (DRP), which might be the…

ADF STAFF Above the busy streets of Kampala, Nairobi and other cities, closed-circuit cameras keep an unwavering watch on the people moving beneath them. The cameras are part of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei’s Safe City initiative, which has found buyers across the continent from Morocco to South Africa. Huawei launched the first Safe City project in Nairobi, Kenya, installing 1,800 high-definition cameras across the city. African nations are increasingly embracing offers from Chinese technology companies to provide high-speed internet, 4G and 5G cellphone services, and closed-circuit security camera networks. Such networks now are in place in more than a dozen…

U.S. Africa Command Staff If 2020 has taught Africa — and the world — anything, it’s that it is crucial to be prepared for everything. That means scanning the threat horizon and getting ready for what is coming next. It also means thinking about unseen possibilities and preparing for them. The year has shown that threats come in all shapes and sizes, seen and unseen. If those threats have one thing in common, it’s that they require a coordinated response to ensure safety and security. This year’s threats also have taught something else: African nations have learned from their experiences…

Gen. Adem Mohammed, chief of general staff of the Ethiopian National Defence Force, spoke during the opening ceremony of the African Land Forces Summit, a conference co-hosted by U.S. Army Africa in Addis Ababa on February 18, 2020. His remarks have been edited to fit this format. Africa today is a region of strategic importance. The global military superpowers are expanding their presence on the continent. Terrorism, extremist groups, illicit traffickers, pirates, organized criminals and other nontraditional security actors are seeking to establish a foothold and are challenging our security environment.  The complex threats are diverse and have no boundaries.…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Tunisia’s Interior Ministry deployed a police robot to patrol the streets of the capital and enforce a lockdown imposed in March 2020 to help the country battle the spread of COVID-19. Known as PGuard, the “robocop” is remotely operated and equipped with infrared and thermal imaging cameras, in addition to a sound and light alarm system. The robot’s Tunisian creator, Anis Sahbani, said the machine first was produced in 2015 to carry out security patrols. It also operates autonomously through artificial intelligence. The robot, built by Sahbani’s Enova Robotics company, costs from $100,000 to $140,000 and has been…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A chestnut horse appears on a dusty Bangui street, trotting among the bashed-up cars, motorbike taxis and crumbling buildings. The rider is a well-known figure in the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR): Soumaila Zacharia Maidjida, nicknamed “Dida,” is a former sprinter who set a national record for the 800 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He is one of a handful of horse riders in the CAR, a country whose poverty, climate and war make it one of the world’s least equine-friendly environments. “Everyone knows Dida,” the rider said. “When ministers and bosses want to go…

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION The United Nations is testing drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomizers to spray pesticides in parts of East Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts. Hundreds of millions of the voracious insects have swept across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in what the U.N. has called the worst outbreak in a quarter century. Djibouti, Eritrea and Uganda also have been affected. The insects, which can travel up to 150 kilometers a day, threaten to increase food shortages in a region where up to 25 million people are reeling from three consecutive years of droughts and floods, aid…