ADF

REUTERS In his poem Rough Path, Yousef Kamara reflects on his years selling drugs and stealing as the leader of a street gang in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown. “Like a traveller in a rough jungle/Self propelling all alone/Edging through danger sharper than blades/My rough path is a cracked zone,” he writes. After quitting the gang three years ago, Kamara now hopes his journey to acclaim as a poet can offer an example to other young people in Freetown, where increasing numbers are joining gangs. Kamara has been published in several international poetry magazines and was invited in 2019 to attend…

ADF STAFF As a frightening new respiratory illness flared in western China and eventually made its way into Europe, Africa was dealing with several other infectious disease outbreaks. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), workers were trying to quell a stubborn Ebola epidemic in the east of the nation that began in August 2018. In January 2019, a measles outbreak hit the DRC, infecting more than 300,000 people by mid-March 2020. In Nigeria, health officials were facing their largest-ever outbreak of Lassa fever, a seasonal illness carried by rats and spread through their waste. All of this happened…

MAJ. GEN. PRINCE C. JOHNSON III As the world faces an invisible enemy, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, it might be helpful to revisit Liberia’s experience during the 2014-2016 outbreak of the Ebola virus. Although we made mistakes and suffered setbacks, we also learned quite a bit about the military’s proper role in fighting an epidemic. Ultimately, I believe, the efforts by the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) and its international partners helped slow the spread of the virus and saved lives. I am confident that the lessons we learned will leave us better positioned to face future outbreaks. As…

ADF STAFF As poachers go high-tech with helicopters, animal sedatives and high-powered rifles, the men and women protecting endangered wildlife are going old school — with dogs. Conservation authorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa say that poachers now fly in helicopters over game parks to identify rhinos and, while airborne, shoot drugs at the animals to sedate them. Once targeted animals become weakened, the rustlers land and brutally cut off their horns with chainsaws. There are no mercy killings here; the animals are left to bleed to death. To put them out of their misery would be to attract vultures,…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Photos by AFP/GETTY IMAGES When Fredie Blom was born, the automobile was in its infancy, the first airplane was less than a year old and World War I was in the future. More than 116 years later, Blom still got around with the help of his cane. On warm days he would sit outside his home in the Delft neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa, and smoke his beloved cigarettes. “I have lived this long because of God’s grace,” Blom told Agence France-Presse on his birthday in May 2020. About three months later, however, Blom’s long life came…

ADF STAFF Twenty years ago, few had heard of cyber warfare. Religious extremism was not considered a threat to most countries. And piracy was thought to have been eradicated a century earlier.  Things can change quickly.  As land forces chiefs from across Africa gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February 2020, they were looking to the future. The four-day African Land Forces Summit (ALFS) sponsored by U.S. Army Africa (USARAF) and co-hosted by the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) was an opportunity to look over the horizon and begin to prepare for the threats that will be most prevalent years…

When South Korea faced a communist incursion from the North in 1950, it asked the world for help. One country in Africa answered the call: Ethiopia.  Emperor Haile Selassie formed a battalion from his Imperial Bodyguard and deployed it to fight under the United Nations flag.  By the time the conflict was over, Ethiopia’s Kagnew Battalion had won the respect of allies and enemies. The Soldiers’ heroism during an outnumbered battle on “Pork Chop Hill” has become the stuff of legends. In fact, Ethiopia was said to be the only contingent that never lost a prisoner or left a dead…

ADF STAFF When Sierra Leonean fishermen board their small wooden boats and head out into the open sea to make a living, sometimes they can see their enemy. Along the ocean horizon float larger fishing vessels and trawlers — virtually all of them foreign and most Chinese — waiting to scoop up their catch using an array of illegal and destructive methods. Up to 70 trawlers work in Sierra Leonean waters around the clock, according to a BBC report. Sometimes the rust-stained trawlers drop heavy, metal doors that sink and help drag nets across the ocean floor, scraping away priceless…

MAJ. GEN. (RET.) MUHAMMAD INUWA IDRIS ilitary officers have all benefited from professional military education (PME) throughout their careers. PME is structured to include a mix of training, skills acquisition and traditional classroom instruction. It is designed to support a Soldier from the beginning of his or her career up to the time he or she exits active duty. It shapes attitudes toward enhanced achievements of individual and institutional missions. It is graduated into levels and compartmentalized between the enlisted and officer cadres.  Soldiers who have studied at the most prestigious PME institutions carry that pride of accomplishment with them…

When it comes to building military capacity in Africa, adding aircraft tends to take a back seat because of the expense involved to acquire combat craft, trainers and cargo planes. Military applications aside, airlift capacity remains a critical need throughout the continent, as much for moving troops to troubled regions as dropping supplies to areas hit by natural disasters. To address this need, the African Union (AU) has established a cell within its Peace Support Operation Division called the Continental Movement Coordination Center. The center oversees airlift contributed by the continent’s regional economic communities, as well as short-term contract airlift,…