ADF

Air Force Contributes to Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia ADF STAFF The residents of Bishoftu, Ethiopia, a lakeside town 25 kilometers south of the capital city, are accustomed to the rumble of jets taking off and landing at the Ethiopian Air Force’s (ETAF) Central Air Base. In June 2018, they heard the roar of a refurbished, C-130E Hercules cargo aircraft donated by the United States government. The intent of this donation was to further develop the ETAF’s capacity to resupply peacekeeping forces in the region and to respond to humanitarian crises. The delivery of the aircraft also was celebrated by honoring John…

ADF STAFF The U.S. Navy once analyzed data and concluded that, in theory, a C-130 Hercules transport plane could carry 25,000 pounds of freight, fly for 4,000 kilometers and eventually land on an aircraft carrier. On October 30, 1963, that theory was put to the test. A C-130 made a successful landing on an American aircraft carrier. Its 40-meter wingspan cleared the control tower by just 4 meters.  Fifty-five years later, it retains the record for the largest, heaviest plane ever to land on a carrier. It was hardly the most grueling test for a C-130. As reported by The…

MAJ. RYAN McCAUGHAN  In 1910, in the American town of Gulfport, Mississippi, a young boy named John Robinson witnessed a seaplane landing in a bay near his home. As the boy saw the pilot perform an array of aerial acrobatics for the onlookers, he felt the course of his life alter. Robinson made it his mission to learn to fly. His mother explained that this was not a common goal for an African-American boy in the early 20th century. That only made him more resolved. Robinson demonstrated tremendous acumen for machines and eventually earned a place at the prestigious Tuskegee…

The country’s military wants to play a larger role in maintaining security in East Africa ADF STAFF When military forces from Africa, Europe and the United States conducted the seventh Cutlass Express maritime exercise in 2018, they were joined by the Somali Maritime Police — the first time in nearly 30 years that Somalia had participated in any security exercise outside its own borders. Participation in a military training exercise is a significant step for Somalia. The country has yet to fully defeat al-Shabaab extremists, and it relies on 22,000 African Union Mission in Somalia peacekeepers from six other African…

Security at Sea Must Consider an Array of Issues, From the Environment to Economics ADF STAFF There was a time when a country’s maritime strategy consisted of its navy or coast guard protecting its waters, defending citizens from enemies and pirates, and going after people fishing illegally. That’s a shallow view of maritime security in the 21st century. Groups such as the United Nations and the African Union say that a modern-day maritime strategy must protect assets, ensure sustainable economic growth, guard the environment, manage energy use, and build the ability to work with neighboring countries and regions. Africa’s nations…

Half a century after the historic trial at which Nelson Mandela escaped the gallows, one of his fellow former prisoners walked the Cannes red carpet on the French Riviera for the premiere of a documentary about those with him in the dock. Andrew Mlangeni is one of the last surviving defendants of the 1963-1964 Rivonia trial of Mandela and nine others who faced the death sentence on charges of plotting guerrilla warfare and acts of sabotage against South Africa’s apartheid regime. “I knew that one day I would come out of prison,” said the 92-year-old, who spent 27 years behind…

President Danny Faure of the Seychelles spoke for island nations around the world by calling for action to clean up the ocean. He spoke at the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Quebec, Canada, and displayed photographs of plastic waste piling up on the nation’s beaches.  “Islands can no longer afford to see ourselves as dots lost in a sea of blue,” Faure said in June 2018. “We are sentinels, the guardians of two-thirds of our blue planet’s surface. We must act accordingly.”  To make his point, Faure showed photos of Aldabra, a coral atoll and UNESCO World Heritage Site…

ADF STAFF Google plans to open its first artificial intelligence (AI) center on the African continent. The center, which was slated to open in 2018 in Accra, Ghana, will bring together top machine learning researchers and engineers and address challenges in health care, agriculture and education, Google said in a blog. Moustapha Cisse, a staff research scientist from Senegal, will lead the center. “AI has great potential to positively impact the world, and more so if the world is well-represented in the development of new AI technologies,” wrote Cisse and Google AI senior fellow Jeff Dean in a blog post…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Tunisia’s tourism industry, hard hit by terror attacks in 2015, is rebounding, with revenues up nearly a third in the beginning of 2018, the sector’s minister said. “There is a significant improvement,” Tourism Minister Selma Elloumi Rekik told AFP, as visitor numbers surpassed the first five months of 2014, largely due to rising Russian and Chinese arrivals. The 2015 attacks devastated Tunisia’s tourism industry. An attack at the National Bardo museum in Tunis and another targeting a beach resort in Sousse together killed 59 foreign tourists and a Tunisian guard. Visitor arrivals surpassed 2.3 million through May 20,…

DEFENCEWEB As part of a push to support counterinsurgency and peacekeeping efforts, the United States donated equipment and vehicles to the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF). The equipment donated on June 7, 2018, included 30 Mercedes-Benz trucks, six boom lifts, a rough terrain container handler, three Oshkosh armored trucks, a bulldozer, 10 generators and spares.  The equipment was donated at a ceremony attended by U.S. Ambassador to Uganda Deborah Malac and received by Ugandan Chief of Defence Forces Gen. David Muhoozi at the Uganda Rapid Deployment Capability Centre in Jinja district. The center is a unit of the East African…