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BRAND SOUTH AFRICA Nigerian artist Peju Alatise won the South African 2017 FNB Art Prize, one of the most coveted art awards on the continent. Her work focuses on the experiences of contemporary African women. Alatise’s early paintings, later sculptures and current installations were showcased in September 2017 at the annual First National Bank Joburg Art Fair. The fair, one of South Africa’s leading art events, featured more than 60 exhibitions across five categories, including traditional and modern art. Artists and cultural organizations from 11 countries participated. Born in 1975 in Lagos, Nigeria, Alatise studied architecture before being inspired by…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The United Nations Security Council has backed reforms to reduce inefficiencies, corruption and abuse in far-flung peacekeeping operations. Although many peacekeeping missions have been hailed as successful — Sierra Leone most recently — others have been criticized for sexual abuse violations and corruption, especially in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are 16 U.N. peacekeeping operations underway, with more than 100,000 personnel, at an annual cost of nearly $8 billion. The U.N. has said that, adjusted for inflation, the cost to member states has decreased by 17 percent in the past…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE The French Navy conducted a series of 10-day regional exercises named African NEMO (Navy’s Exercise for Maritime Operations) from the Dixmude aircraft carrier. The goal is to prepare more than 20 West African countries to step up their battle against maritime crime. “We went from tactical training of teams boarding the boats to lifesaving at sea, to how to make the centers put into place by the Yaounde process work,” said Dixmude Capt. Jean Porcher. The Yaounde process was adopted in 2013 as a code of conduct by West and Central African nations to share intelligence and coordinate…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A Nigerian lawyer who helped secure the release of more than 100 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok was awarded one of the United Nations’ top prizes. Zannah Mustapha was given the annual Nansen Refugee Award for his “crucial mediating” role and his work helping children affected by the long-running conflict. Mustapha, 58, said the award was unexpected but he was “exceedingly happy” to have been chosen. “I look forward to being a worthy ambassador for such a noble award,” he said in an interview in the capital, Abuja. Mustapha set up the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation…

REUTERS Five countries in the Sahel are setting up a security bloc to crack down on trafficking, terror and other cross-border crimes. The force assembled by the G5 Sahel bloc — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — is expected to comprise about 5,000 troops. “We bring this combat against terrorism not only to protect our own people and countries but for the whole world,” Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou said at a news conference in the capital, Niamey. The idea of the G5 force was conceived in 2015 and was expected to be operational by the end of 2017. In…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Algeria announced that it has destroyed the last of its stock of anti-personnel mines, 10 months after fully demining the entire country. A total of 5,970 mines were destroyed at a ceremony in Djelfa in southeast Algeria. Algeria ratified the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines in 2000 and said it completed the demining of its territory in December 2016, clearing 9 million land mines. The scourge claimed 7,300 civilian lives in the North African country, mostly during the 1954-1962 war of independence, according to Deputy Defense Minister Ahmed Gaid Salah. Algerian demining specialists cleared mines from 1963 to…

REUTERS Maritime police from Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland seized a boat loaded with weapons from Yemen. Puntland authorities displayed dozens of anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, AK-47 rifles and boxes of ammunition from the boat apprehended off the Horn of Africa. European maritime forces patrolling sea lanes off Somalia tracked the small vessel, known as Al Faruq, from Yemen, said Abdirahman Mohamud Hassan, director general of Puntland maritime police force. He said they had seized other boatloads of weapons destined for Islamic State and al-Shabaab militants active in Somalia. However, on this occasion the cargo was believed to be owned…

BRAND SOUTH AFRICA A group of students from South Africa’s University of the Western Cape (UWC) is the first African research team to lead an experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. Better known as the home of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN is one of the most prestigious science research facilities in the world. Colliders are used in particle physics research, in which particles are accelerated and hit other particles. CERN has the largest collider in the world, and it also is described as the largest machine in the world. The team of postgraduate students fired…

VOICE OF AMERICA A farmers’ group in South Sudan’s Imotong State says it has found a way to combat the dreaded fall armyworm, which has devastated crops across the continent. Robert Lokang, leader of the Bidaya Farm Association, regularly sprays his crops with a concoction of neem tree leaves, ash, powdered soap and water. The all-natural formula is designed to kill the armyworms while not harming the plants. It’s not a new invention. Lokang said he learned it decades ago as a child, when his father used the same concoction to ward off pests. He said that in 2016 the…

JEFFREY MOYO/INTER PRESS SERVICE Sixty-seven-year-old Hloniphani Sidingo smiles broadly while popping out through the gate of a clinic in her village, as she heads home clutching containers of anti-retroviral (ARV) pills. The first Bantu people to dwell in present-day Zimbabwe, the Khoisan, also known as the Bushmen or Basagwa, populate remote areas of southern Africa, particularly Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Here, the Khoisan community is found in Matabeleland North’s Tsholotsho district, where many like Sidingo live. An estimated 1.2 million people in Zimbabwe are living with HIV/AIDS. This includes nearly one in three Khoisan people. Now,…