ADF

ADF STAFF Just four years ago, Liberia’s West Point was reeling from the biggest Ebola outbreak in West Africa’s history. As the international community battled the ferocious virus, the Liberian military enforced a quarantine that put residents on edge in the sprawling community of 75,000 people. West Point was formed in the 1940s in the capital city of Monrovia when workers dredged and created the nation’s first shipping port. West Point expanded as war and migration pushed more and more people into the capital. Ebola has long since receded as an immediate threat for West Point’s residents, but the impoverished…

Reverence, Respect and Credibility Brig. Gen. Saleh Bala Discusses the Need for a Culture of Professionalism in Africa’s Militaries Retired Brig. Gen. Saleh Bala spent 29 years in the Nigerian Army. He is a former military chief of staff of the United Nations Mission in Côte d’Ivoire and a former chief of staff for the Nigerian Army Infantry Center. He has a long history of teaching the fundamentals of professionalism to Soldiers, from cadets to midcareer officers. He served as an instructor at the Nigerian Army Infantry School, an instructor at the Nigerian Defense Academy and was on the directing…

Africa’s greatest leaders found a variety of ways to govern, including delegating authority and leading by example. ADF STAFF In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela recalled how he met the president of Tanzania in March, 1990. “We arrived in Dar es Salaam … and I met Julius Nyerere, the newly independent country’s first president,” Mandela wrote in Long Walk to Freedom. “We talked at his house, which was not at all grand, and I recall that he drove himself in a simple car, a little Austin. This impressed me, for it suggested that he was a man of the people.” That…

Holdovers from History Hamper the Vast Nation’s Ability to Overcome Instability ADF STAFF The proliferation of armed groups in Africa’s second-largest country has destabilized the nation for decades, but an incident in December 2017 brought renewed attention to the dangers present in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Allied Democratic Forces attacked United Nations personnel in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province, killing 15 peacekeepers, at least five members of the DRC’s military, and wounding another 53 peacekeepers. The three-hour firefight destroyed at least one armored personnel carrier, U.N. officials told The Washington Post. “This is the worst attack…

In asymmetric wars, more needs to be done to protect people caught in the middle ADF STAFF A small bus loaded with 24 people from Burkina Faso was crossing into Mali, en route to a weekly market in the town of Boni. Nine kilometers from the market, the vehicle triggered a land mine planted by Malian insurgents. All 24 people, including four babies and their mothers, were killed in the January 2018 incident. It’s a common story. At least 600,000 African civilians in 27 countries have been killed in the past 20 years during conflicts, with millions more wounded and…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Ivoirian Aristide Bancé is football’s version of Marco Polo. Since debuting for the Ivoirian club Stade d’Abidjan in 2000, the 33-year-old has played for 20 professional clubs, including time in Belgium, Burkina Faso, Dubai, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Qatar, South Africa, Turkey and Ukraine. He currently plays for Al Masry of Egypt, where football matches are under tight security. “It’s a shame that matches here are played behind closed doors at the moment, for security reasons,” he explained. “It would be really super if the supporters could come back into the stadiums.” In 2012, thousands…

BRAND SOUTH AFRICA A South African chef was named the best female chef in the world for 2017 at The Best Chef Awards in Poland. Chantel Dartnell, owner of the acclaimed Restaurant Mosaic in Tshwane, has twice been named South African Chef of the Year, and her Pretoria restaurant is one of the country’s top-rated dining spots. She trained at a number of restaurants in the United Kingdom. She uses what she learned to create classic dining and uniquely South African menus that have earned Restaurant Mosaic several local and international food awards, including a Diners’ Club World’s 50 Best…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A live performance of an aria from an Italian opera isn’t a common sound in the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria. So, when news spread of an appearance by professional soprano Omo Bello at the Musical Society of Nigeria School of Music, crowds flocked to see her. “I didn’t realize to what extent I was recognized in Nigeria,” the 33-year-old admitted after singing O mio babbino caro, from Giacomo Puccini’s 1918 opera Gianni Schicchi. “I’ve been away for over a decade, and I guess things have changed and I didn’t realize how much,” she said. “When I was…

DEFENCEWEB Piracy across the world dropped in 2017 as officials reported a total of 180 attacks against ships to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). This is the lowest annual number of incidents since 1995, when 188 incidents were reported. In 2017, pirates boarded 136 vessels, and there were 22 attempted attacks, 16 vessels fired upon and six hijacked. In 15 incidents, pirates took 91 crew members hostage aboard their ships, and 75 were kidnapped and removed from their vessels in 13 other incidents. Three crew members were killed in 2017, and six were injured. “Although the number of attacks is…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Yetnebersh Nigussie’s first battle for disability rights was in law school, when she successfully pushed university administrators to provide Braille textbooks for blind students such as herself. Not long after, Yetnebersh, 35, left the legal profession to pursue a different type of advocacy as a full-time fighter for the rights and opportunities of Ethiopia’s millions of disabled people. In 2017, her life’s work was recognized with a Right Livelihood Award, often called the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” But her work is not yet complete. “There are still … millions of persons with disabilities who are living in a very…