ADF

ADF  STAFF Africa is on the verge of being declared polio-free after three years without any recorded cases of the disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) said in August 2019 that Nigeria had marked three years without a wild polio case, calling it a “major milestone.” If no more cases emerge in the next few months, Africa could officially be declared polio-free in 2020. The last case was recorded in Borno state in August 2016.  North and South America eliminated polio more than 20 years ago. The disease has killed and disabled hundreds of thousands of people around the world.…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Black Africans are at a disadvantage when it comes to drug treatments because they represent only 2% of the genetic samples used for pharmaceutical research. A new Nigeria-based genomics company wants to change that. According to Abasi Ene-Obong, founder and CEO of biotech startup 54gene, black Africans and people of black ancestry are more genetically diverse than all of the other populations in the world combined, making their genetic information “a huge resource to be tapped.” He has set up a genetic research laboratory in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, from where his team analyzed 40,000 DNA…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Queues have formed outside banks in Zimbabwe as people hope to get hold of the country’s first Zimbabwe dollar notes issued since 2009. The currency was scrapped a decade ago because hyperinflation caused prices to double almost daily. Zimbabwe’s central bank hopes the new notes will ease a severe cash shortage as the country suffers a deepening economic crisis. The bank has played down fears that the move will fuel further inflation. Inflation in Zimbabwe reached 300% in August 2019 — the highest rate in the world. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe insists that the 2-…

ADF STAFF The Kingdom of Axum, also known as Aksum, was the first to do many things in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was the first kingdom to mint its own coins. It created its own written language, called Ge’ez, which still is in use in Ethiopia today. Its king was the first to adopt Christianity as an official religion. And Axum dominated trade in the Horn of Africa and across the Red Sea for centuries.  Although the kingdom dated to the first century A.D., its time of greatest influence and prosperity was from the third century to the sixth century. The…

CLUES This area has 18 lakes of various sizes, depths and colors.  These permanent lakes in a desert result from an aquifer and a complex hydrological system that is not fully understood. Some of the lakes have blue, green or reddish water, which reflects their chemical composition. About a third of the surface of the lakes is covered with green floating reed carpets that contrast with the water. ANSWER  Lakes of Ounianga, northeastern Chad

ADF STAFF Cyber security experts say Africa’s top smartphone brand has sold tens of thousands of phones loaded with malicious software. The phones drain users’ data, sign them up for subscription services without their knowledge, and make them unwilling accomplices in fraudulent ad schemes. The Triada malware turned up on Chinese-made Tecno W2 smartphones in Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana and South Africa, according to a recent report. Traida uses a hard-to-remove program known as x-Helper to do its dirty work, experts say. In addition to creating fake subscriptions, the malware generates fake clicks on banner ads in the background of sites…

ADF STAFF A woman prayed in the rubble of a mosque on the beach at Jamestown, Ghana. Nearby, despondent men sifted through the wreckage of the historic fishing community, looking for anything they could salvage from their homes and businesses. A school was leveled, a playground destroyed and an area where locals played soccer on the beach was covered with debris. Ghanaian leaders promised for years to revitalize Accra’s iconic fishing community, a popular tourist attraction where locals row colorful canoes into the Gulf of Guinea to catch fish that are smoked on the beach and sold locally. Officials procured…

ADF STAFF For more than a decade, the terror group al-Shabaab has used the abduction and recruitment of thousands of children in Somalia to fuel its deadly insurgency. It happened again in what has recently become an epicenter of armed conflict — the central Mudug region. But this time, the children fought back. According to Somali National Army (SNA) Commander Isma’il Abdi Malik Malin, al-Shabaab militants swept into the town of Ba’adweyn on August 12, invading land occupied by herders. Looking to set up a new base in the area, the extremists demanded that residents give them money and animals…

ADF STAFF As part of its ongoing support of the Nigerien Armed Forces’ anti-extremism efforts, U.S. Ambassador to Niger Eric P. Whitaker recently presented Niger’s military with $8 million in equipment and spare parts, including 22 American-made Mamba armored vehicles. Minister of National Defense Issoufou Katambé received the equipment on behalf of the Nigerien Armed Forces (FAN). “These modern vehicles will help increase the mobility of units of the Nigerien Armed Forces by helping them to maintain pressure on the various terrorist armed groups which attack populations and symbols of the state,” Katambé said during the August 5 ceremony in…

ADF STAFF Fireworks erupted at a recent Nigerian National Assembly meeting. The explosive subject? A probe of loans from China since 2000 and whether Nigeria’s sovereignty could be at stake if it were to default. China has long been accused of using “debt-trap diplomacy,” in which it saddles a developing country with a high debt burden only to extract concessions later on. The issue has taken on far greater urgency and caused widespread economic anxiety in Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, because of the dual tolls of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging oil prices. Nigeria’s 2020 budget revision sparked a…