ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE West African schoolgirls, some not yet teenagers, have taken a starring role at an engineering competition in Senegal, crushing stereotypes with their robotics expertise. The Pan-African Robotics Competition in Dakar, Senegal, in May 2017 reflected the growing importance of science education as a way to spur the economy and spark development. Rows of young women from Senegal, The Gambia and Mali screamed for their teams as robots picked up plastic cones and dropped them onto markers. Senegal’s Mariama-Ba all-girls academy won the high school category for a “made in Africa” pump solution to flooding, and girls were well-represented…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Ahmed Harrad spends his days crisscrossing northern Morocco trying to persuade locals to protect the endangered Barbary macaque monkey. “If nothing is done, this species will disappear within 10 years,” warns a poster on his aging four-wheel-drive vehicle. The only species of macaque outside Asia, it lives on leaves and fruits and can weigh up to 20 kilograms. The species once lived throughout North Africa and parts of Europe. Having disappeared from Libya and Tunisia, it now lives in mountainous areas of Algeria and Morocco’s northern Rif region. Another semiwild population of about 200 in Gibraltar are the…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo Serves as a Testing Ground for Using Unmanned Aerial Surveillance ADF STAFF The blue, mineral-rich waters of Lake Kivu separating Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) form a busy trade route. Merchants load goods into canoes, motorboats and ferries. The route is vital to local commerce, but all involved know the risks. The lake is not always calm, and the boats are not all sturdy. On May 5, 2014, a type of boat known locally as a “canot rapide” capsized in strong winds. About 24 were aboard — most without life vests — and…

Projecting Force to Protect a Country MONUSCO’s Force Commander Says Technology Helps Peacekeepers Overcome Challenges in the DRC, but Improvements Are Needed PHOTOS BY MONUSCO Since 2016, Lt. Gen. Derrick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi of South Africa has served as force commander of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world. Mgwebi has more than 35 years of military experience and has held multiple senior posts for the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), including his current position as chief of joint operations. Previously, he served as the SANDF director of…

U.N. Police and Soldiers Can Enhance Peacekeeping With Off-the-Shelf Tools ADF STAFF As the summer heat baked the Central African Republic (CAR), tensions between ex-Séléka and Anti-Balaka forces boiled near the town of Kaga-Bandoro in August 2016. Clashes continued in September, killing four and displacing more than 3,000 people in nearby Ndomété. By October, the region was a powder keg. Peacekeepers dismantled illegal checkpoints around Kaga-Bandoro, angering ex-Séléka forces, who had used them as a source of income. Security began to deteriorate, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) staffers became targets of violence. By October 11, about 2,000 Muslims demonstrated peacefully, denouncing…

Surveillance Technology Helps Secure Border Zones ADF STAFF As Tunisia emerges from the most tumultuous period in its history, one thing has become clear: It must secure its borders. This fact was illustrated during a bloody attack in March 2016 in which dozens of ISIS-aligned fighters entered the country from Libya, overran the border town of Ben Guerdan, and opened fire on police and Army buildings. After a gunbattle that lasted hours, more than 50 people lay dead, including 36 militants. The incident grew even more disturbing when the attackers were identified, and most were found to be Tunisians. Some of…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE There is reason for hope in Senegal’s Casamance region. New houses dot a landscape once dominated by abandoned ruins full of bullet holes, though the specter of a 35-year conflict still haunts its villages. Separatist rebels of the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance (MFDC) began fighting for independence more than three decades ago but have long ceased once-frequent attacks on the Senegalese Army. As residents return to previously unsafe areas, many are asking when a conflict that is technically ongoing, if all but invisible, officially will end. “I fled to [regional capital] Ziguinchor in 1991 and came…

Enlisting the Support of Citizens, and Rewarding Them, Can Pay Off in the Fight Against Terrorism ADF STAFF As Somalia’s national elections took place in February 2017, government and African Union forces took action to head off violence aimed at spoiling a peaceful transfer of power. Officials moved the election, in which members of Parliament voted for president, from a police academy in Mogadishu to an aircraft hangar at Aden Adde International Airport. Security measures included a ban on flights to and from the airport, a traffic shutdown and a no-fly zone over the city, the BBC reported. Even so,…

Pirates are attacking ships in Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea, and coastal nations will have to work together to stop them. ADF STAFF In February 2016, 14 Nigerian and Ghanaian pirates hijacked the Maximus, a Panama-flagged oil tanker, about 100 kilometers off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire. Eighteen crew members, representing six countries, were aboard. The pirates planned to sell the ship’s 4,700 tons of diesel fuel on the black market. The pirates even changed the ship’s name to Elvis 3 to avoid being tracked. The navies of several countries in the region, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo,…

New laws and tactics are needed to catch extremists online ADF STAFF In July 2017, as Iraqi forces were pushing ISIS out of the city of Mosul, authorities found a 16-year-old girl hiding in a tunnel. She had run away from her home in Germany a year earlier to join the extremist group. She had gotten her plane ticket by posing as her mother. Pictures of the sad, frightened-looking girl, surrounded by her smiling captors, were published and posted on the internet all over the world. The girl had been raised in a Protestant family but had shown little interest…