ADF

A New Fighting Force Seeks to Secure the Region Against Jihadists and Illicit Trafficking ADF STAFF Thick, black smoke spewed into the sky above the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in March 2018, evidence that radical jihadists again had attacked the bustling capital in Africa’s western Sahel region. The two-pronged attack targeted the French Embassy and Burkina Faso’s military headquarters. The assault killed eight Burkinabe Soldiers and eight assailants. Eighty other people were injured. It was the third extremist attack in the city in just more than two years. Security Minister Clément Sawadogo told journalists that the attack appeared to…

Multilateral Interventions Carry Enormous Promise and Challenges ADF STAFF In early 2017, The Gambia was hurtling toward a crisis. Its longtime president, Yahya Jammeh, had lost the presidential election but refused to accept the results and leave office. His opponent, Adama Barrow, fled the country fearing for his life, prompting his supporters to take to the streets in protest. But on the way to a violent clash, something unusual happened: Five countries in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) banded together and sent a 7,000-person force to the border of the country. Jammeh was given an ultimatum: Depart…

ADF STAFF In the troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), violence and displacement have become familiar, especially in the east. Local militias and fighters from neighboring countries have exploited the chaos for years now. Among those dangerous groups is the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan-based group that has operated in the DRC since the 1990s. In a series of massacres since 2014 — most by hatchet and machete — the group has killed nearly 1,000 people, Reuters reported. In December 2017, the Allied Democratic Forces killed 15 Tanzanian peacekeepers. The ensuing joint military operation by the DRC and Uganda against…

At the African Land Forces Summit, Commanders Share Stories, Build Partnerships ADF STAFF photos by U.S. ARMY AFRICA On day two of the African Land Forces Summit (ALFS) in Abuja, Nigeria, moderator Dr. Monde Muyangwa asked for a bit of indulgence from the Army commanders in attendance. She wanted to tell the story of an 11-year-old girl growing up in Zambia. The girl stood on the roadside and watched trucks roll by filled with the bodies of war victims. The girl saw her aunt cradle the remains of her children after the family’s home was bombed. That girl, she said,…

Maj. Gen. Abdiweli Jama Gorod was named Somalia’s chief of Defence Forces (CDF) in 2017. He sat down with ADF at the African Land Forces Summit 2018 in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss his career, his efforts to rebuild the Somali National Army (SNA) and his belief that the time is finally right to defeat extremism in the country. The interview was translated from Somali and has been edited to fit this format. ADF: Can you share a bit about your career path? Maj. Gen. Gorod: I joined the military in 1975 as part of the Somali National Air Force. I…

The African Union Mission in Somalia has refined its message to counter al-Shabaab ADF STAFF | photos by AMISOM The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) sometimes has struggled to get its message out. The mission had several false starts in trying to communicate with Somali civilians, people in the troop-contributing countries and the world in general. Now, over the course of the mission’s 11 years, its communications staff has learned to be flexible and to improvise. In May 2018, the mission began taking stock of itself and what it has accomplished — and invited journalists to participate in the process. The self-study took about…

Women Bring Value to Peacekeeping Missions, but Participation Hurdles Remain ADF STAFF Cpl. Laker Doris Patricia of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force drove a large supply truck every day. She carried everything from bullets to bombs. If she wasn’t twisting the truck’s huge steering wheel, she was on standby, ready to buckle up and trundle away. And she did it in the center of Somalia, one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Maj. Gen. Kristin Lund of Norway spent two years as force commander of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. She was the first woman to command…

Public and private interests team up to build a new kind of training facility in Cape Verde ADF STAFF Cape Verde would seem to be an unlikely location for an international military training center. The 10 islands comprising the nation are 570 kilometers west of the African continent in the North Atlantic Ocean. With a total area of just more than 4,000 square kilometers, Cape Verde is one of the smallest members of the African Union. But for a variety of reasons, it is seen as the ideal spot for a $125 million training center dedicated to African security forces. The…

ADF STAFF After becoming Ghana’s first skeleton racer in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Akwasi Frimpong is planning to compete in the 2022 Olympics in China. Frimpong, 32, lived in a one-room home in Ghana until he was 8, when his mother moved to the Netherlands. By high school, Frimpong was one of the best sprinters in the country. He became the Dutch National junior champion, earning 16 medals. He planned on running in the 2012 Summer Olympics, but an injury kept him off the team. Refusing to give up on his Olympic dream, Frimpong learned to be…

VOICE OF AMERICA One of 2018’s biggest films premiered for African audiences in February in the Kenyan hometown of one of the film’s stars, actress Lupita Nyong’o. Based on a Marvel superhero comic, Black Panther is set in a fictional, technologically advanced African nation The Kisumu premiere drew several hundred people. Although the stars of the movie did not attend, that did not dampen the atmosphere. “To be honest, it’s a great honor that Kisumu is the first place in Africa that this movie is screened,” Kenyan actor Moses Oduwa said. “We are so happy that we are honored this…