ADF

WORLD BANK A social safety net program in South Sudan that temporarily provides income to poor and vulnerable households in Juba is being expanded to six other areas of the country. The public works component of the World Bank’s Safety Net and Skills Development Project is operating in Juba and includes road repairs. It is benefiting 6,000 households, of which an estimated 70 percent are headed by women. The public works program has transferred close to $1.6 million as income for 652,049 total person-days worked, to about 85,000 people from 10,865 households. Cash transfers provide increased purchasing power for basic…

VOICE OF AMERICA Political parties in Cameroon have set an ambitious goal in 2018 — to put women in at least 30 percent of elected offices. Three hundred women selected from associations around Cameroon have been campaigning in markets, universities and popular spots in the capital, asking women to register to vote. Cameroon will have a series of important elections in 2018 — local, parliamentary and presidential. Political parties have made public commitments to achieve a United Nations-established benchmark of at least 30 percent female representation. The government has echoed that commitment, calling on parties to put forth a higher…

VOICE OF AMERICA Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf has become the first Somali to lead the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. “I am humbled by this election,” he said. “And I feel that it actually shows the trust placed in me by my colleagues. That’s why I’m extremely grateful to them. I hope that I will be able to meet their expectations and to perform the responsibilities entrusted to me in the best way possible — to show them that they have actually made the right choice in electing me as their president.” The 15-member court is the…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS As a student, Leah Wangari imagined a glamorous life as a globe-trotting flight attendant, not toiling in dirt and manure. Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya’s skyscraper-filled capital, the 28-year-old said farming was the last thing on her mind. The decision to drop agriculture classes haunted her later, when her efforts in agribusiness investing while running a fashion venture failed. She made her way to an unusual new reality TV show, the first of its kind in Africa. Don’t Lose the Plot trains contestants from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and gives them plots to cultivate, with a…

REUTERS Standing by a towering equatorial forest, Jean-Noel Kouame’s new breeze-block house may be beyond the reach of Côte d’Ivoire’s power grid, but it’s perfectly located for solar power. Buoyed by success in East Africa, off-grid solar power startups are pouring into West Africa, offering pay-as-you-go kits in a race to claim tens of millions of customers who lack reliable access to electricity. The main challenge facing smaller companies now is how to raise enough money to supply the expensive solar kits in return for small upfront payments from customers. In Abidjan, Kouame doesn’t know when, or if, the national…

SEYCHELLES NEWS AGENCY An environmental performance index has ranked the Seychelles first out of 180 countries in the climate and energy category, lauding its use of renewable energy. The Environmental Performance Index 2018 ranks countries in 24 categories, including air pollution, sanitation, climate and energy, fisheries, and agriculture. In the climate and energy category, the island nation has made an “impressive leap in the global rankings from its 179th baseline position to first place,” said the report. Principal Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Wills Agricole said the ranking is due to the efforts the Seychelles is making in the…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Angola is working to diversify its oil-dependent economy. One natural and readily available resource is fish, but a lack of equipment and know-how has meant the industry has struggled. President Joao Lourenco took office in September 2017 promising to deliver an “economic miracle” that would transform the Southern African nation, where the United Nations says more than half of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The collapse in 2014 of the price of crude oil, which provides 70 percent of all revenues and nearly all hard currency, put immense pressure on the country to diversify.…

ADF STAFF Bai Bureh once earned the nickname Kebalai, which means “one who never tires of war.” In 1898, he took on one of the most highly trained, disciplined armies in the world. Armed with little more than his stealth, cunning and audacity, he was able to fight to a stalemate for almost a year. Today, he is known as one of Sierra Leone’s greatest heroes. Bureh was born in 1840 in a village in northern Sierra Leone. As a young man, his father sent him away to train to become a warrior. He became a relentless Soldier — so…

CLUES This was the residence of emperors in the 16th and 17th centuries. The city is surrounded by a wall that is 900 meters long. The complex contains palaces, churches, monasteries, and other buildings marked by Hindu and Arab influences. The city was the center of the nation’s government until 1864. ANSWER  The fortress city of Fasil Ghebbi in Gondar, Ethiopia

ADF STAFF After three years of internal conflict in the Central African Republic, the African Union in late 2013 deployed the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA). Its mandate was to “help protect civilians, stabilize the country, and restore state authority over the territory, as well as create conditions conducive to the provision of humanitarian assistance.” Researchers Mor Djandame Mbow and Issaka Souaré say that MISCA applied “a very high standard to its own personnel, including military personnel, in their dealings with civilians.” That included investigating its own personnel after the forced disappearance of some civilians.…