ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Senegal has inaugurated a cyber security school that aims to strengthen West Africa’s defense against computer hackers and prevent the internet from being used to fund terror or distribute propaganda. Senegalese Foreign Minister Sidiki Kaba and French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian opened the National Cyber Security School on the sidelines of an annual regional security conference in Dakar. The school will train security services, the judiciary and private businesses in combating cyber crime. Backed by France, it will have a “regional vocational role” in helping other West African countries, French officials said. The school, which was proposed at…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS The United States has re-established a diplomatic presence in Somalia for the first time in nearly 30 years. The Department of State said the historic event reflected the security progress the East African nation has made. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto is heading the diplomatic mission in Mogadishu, which previously had been based in Nairobi. The U.S. closed its embassy in Somalia in January 1991 amid fighting between rebels and the government and had to airlift out its ambassador and staff. Commenting on the latest move, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: “Our return demonstrates the United States’…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Soldiers who were sent to Lesotho in 2017 after the country’s top Army commander was killed withdrew from the area in November 2018. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional bloc, deployed a force to the landlocked kingdom after an Army commander was shot dead in barracks by officers from a perceived rival faction. The region feared further instability. The seven-nation SADC force, which included 207 military personnel, 15 intelligence officers and 24 police officers, was deployed for six months and extended to a year. The mission was to “strengthen peace and security,” SADC spokeswoman Barbara Lopi…

ADF STAFF Training for Comoran Soldiers and gendarmes can be tough — out of more than 900 people who enrolled in a training class, only 541 completed the course. The training started in 2018 in Itsundzu and was called “Feta 2018.” The class produced 263 Soldiers and 278 gendarmes. Comoran President Azali Assoumani congratulated the recruits at their February 2019 graduation and told them that they had not only learned new technical and tactical skills, but also the rules of being a Soldier, committed to the rule of law and international law. The top five trainees of the gendarmerie and…

ADF STAFF Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana launched a joint security operation called Koudanlgou II in the southern and western areas of Burkina Faso. More than 2,000 security personnel from the three countries were involved in the operation in November 2018, which was designed to crack down on transnational crime such as terrorism, smuggling and drug trafficking. In a news conference after the event in Bouna, Côte d’Ivoire, officials said the operation led to 150 arrests, 11 confiscated vehicles and seized arms, ammunition, cannabis and liquor, the Burkinabe news website Bafujii Infos reported. Security forces also offered health services…

ADF STAFF Ethiopia’s Air Force bombed an al-Shabaab encampment, killing two of the group’s leaders. The January 24, 2019, bombing run in Bur Haybe, east of Baidoa, lasted about 45 minutes, Africa News reported, citing the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corp. The strikes killed al-Shabaab’s regional operations chief and an explosives expert in addition to 35 al-Shabaab fighters. The airstrike took out four military trucks and five high-caliber weapons, Africa News reported.  Reports from a week earlier indicated that Ethiopian troops had been ambushed by al-Shabaab in Baidoa and sustained casualties. Ethiopia formally joined the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS A report on physical inactivity across the globe found that Uganda is the world’s most active nation. The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, is a compilation of surveys done in 168 countries. It highlights the health dangers of not doing enough exercise. It found that just 5.5 percent of Ugandans do not do enough physical activity — defined as at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week.  People in Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and Togo are also doing quite well in terms of getting enough exercise. In…

WORLD BANK Madagascar’s public education spending fell in 2009 after a political crisis, putting thousands of children at risk of having to leave school. Others had to drop out because their families could no longer afford to educate them. With a sharp drop in foreign financing, public spending on education had fallen since 2010. Nationwide, few schools were built, teacher and student materials were not supplied, and many schools did not receive government funding. Emergency funding is helping to overhaul basic education. The Madagascar Emergency Support to Education for All project aims to keep children in primary school by reducing…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE It’s Wednesday, 2 p.m. sharp in the densely populated South African township of Ivory Park —time for about 60 11-year-olds to duel at their local coding club. Armed with basic coding blocks, inventor kits, laptops and inexhaustible imaginations, the six primary school teams compete. The coding club kids use electronic boards to make temporary circuits and prototypes to devise solutions for problems they’ve identified in their community. “We are making an incubator machine that helps children who are born premature and those who are sick,” said student Sifiso Ngobeni. Competitors from another school are tackling the scourge of…

VOICE OF AMERICA The World Health Organization (WHO) says Africans are living longer and healthier lives. But the WHO warns that millions on the continent still face the challenge of chronic diseases. News of the improvement came at a conference in Dakar, Senegal, where WHO representatives met with officials from 47 African countries. Healthy life expectancy on the continent — the number of years at peak health a person experiences — rose from 44.4 years at the turn of the century to 53.8 years in 2015. Overall life expectancy climbed from 50.8 years to 61.2. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional…