ADF

Affectionately called the “Baba of Africa” or “Africa’s father,” Olusegun Obasanjo has spent time as a military officer, statesman, peacemaker and human rights advocate. Born in 1937 in southwest Nigeria, he spent more than 20 years in the Armed Forces, rising to the rank of two-star general. He served as Nigeria’s head of state twice, from 1976 to 1979 and again from 1999 to 2007. In 1979, he became the first military ruler in Africa to hand power to a civilian government, and in 2007 he participated in Nigeria’s first peaceful transition of power from one civilian administration to another.…

ADF STAFF Arab Spring protests swept across North Africa and the Middle East in the early 2010s as citizens rose up in the face of years of autocratic rule. The protests produced a range of results, from the lasting chaos in Libya to a flirtation with democratic rule in neighboring Egypt. The Arab Spring’s reach extended into Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. It lit the fuse that exploded into the bloody Syrian civil war, which persists to this day. But in Tunisia, a nation of 12 million people nestled between Algeria and Libya, things were different. Those differences…

BY DR. HUMPHREY ASAMOAH AGYEKUM Photos by AFP/GETTY IMAGES In Africa, military interventions in politics are an ever-present threat. In recent years, military forces have staged coups in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, twice in Burkina Faso and twice in Mali. Yet, for nearly four decades Ghana has remained an island of relative stability in West Africa. Members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) have been praised for their high level of professionalism and their apolitical nature. This raises the question: How does the GAF manage to avoid involvement in coups? The answer is multifaceted. To understand the newfound professionalism of the Ghanaian military,…

Tanzanian Cpl. Ali Khamis Omary was serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, trying to halt the spread of Ebola. He and his colleagues had been sent to a camp in the eastern part of the country on a joint mission with peacekeepers from Malawi. Rebels attacked Omary and other peacekeepers on November 14, 2018. He was shot in the leg, and Malawian Pvt. Chancy Chitete rushed to help him, administering lifesaving first aid. Chitete dragged Omary to safety despite enemy fire, but he was shot and killed in the process. Thanks to…

ADF STAFF The Baba Ali, a Seychellois fishing vessel, was passing through the Seychelles exclusive economic zone (EEZ) when authorities intercepted it in May 2021. Through an operation coordinated by the Seychelles Air Force, Seychelles Coast Guard and its National Information Sharing and Coordination Centre, authorities boarded and inspected the vessel. What they found –– about $1.2 million worth of heroin and hashish –– signifies the magnitude of the regional trafficking threat. The drug seizure and the arrest of three Seychellois and four Indonesian nationals showed that the island state’s efforts to bolster maritime security were working, Seychellois Fisheries Minister…

ADF STAFF Aircraft from the Royal Moroccan Air Force and U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 3 flew over the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Atlantic Ocean on March 3, 2021, during exercise Lightning Handshake. The Eisenhower, named after a former U.S. president whose nickname was “Ike,” is the flagship of the IKE Carrier Strike Group (IKE CSG), which participated in the exercise. The training’s purpose was to improve the ability of the U.S. and Morocco to operate together across multiple warfare areas, including surface, anti-submarine and air-and-strike warfare; combined logistics support; and maritime interdiction operations. “On…

ADF STAFF As a brutal civil war raged in neighboring Liberia in 1991, Sierra Leone’s long-standing government corruption and weakness inched the nation closer and closer to catastrophe. When the forces of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) crossed the border that March, Sierra Leone soon found itself under attack on two fronts. As its Army battled the NPFL, Sierra Leone also came under attack from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a well-armed and well-funded rebel guerrilla group led by Foday Sankoh, a former Army corporal who found common cause with the invading Liberians. Civil war had come…

ADF STAFF  |  Photos: AFP/Getty Images Sudan was in a hopeful position after shaking off 30 years of brutal, autocratic rule in 2019. A vicious dictator had been toppled, a new prime minister was talking about forming a more professional security sector, and civilians and military officials had set up a government that was crawling toward democracy. After two fraught years under the tenuous transitional government, however, the nation’s ugly history got in the way. A failed uprising in September 2021 by soldiers loyal to former President Omar al-Bashir was but a prelude to a coup a month later when…

ADF STAFF Cabo Verdean police intercepted a boat in early April suspected to be involved with international drug trafficking. The Brazilian boat contained more than 5 tons of cocaine. The operation, which included help from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Navy, Brazilian Federal Police and the National Crime Agency of the United Kingdom, resulted in the arrests of five Brazilians and two Montenegrins. The bust underscored the reality that West Africa is a major stop on the cocaine route from South America to Europe. “West Africa, as a region, is very vulnerable, due to corruption, unemployment, poverty,” Maria-Gorreti…

ADF STAFF Musa Barkame once made his living transporting goods by boat across Lake Chad to markets in Nigeria. All that ended when Boko Haram arrived in the region. “Trading between here and Nigeria is the only job I know,” Barkame told Al-Jazeera while sitting in his waterlogged boat on the Chadian side of the lake. The last time he used his boat, it was to rescue villagers from Boko Haram raids. Now, the boat sits idle, waiting for the day it will return to duty. Like thousands of farmers, fishermen and cattle herders, Barkame is caught between two forces…