ADF

DEFENCEWEB Six Southern African Development Community (SADC) states agreed to strengthen cooperation to battle the scourge of poaching, particularly that of rhinos and elephants. The countries — Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe — met in Mpumalanga, South Africa, for the fourth multilateral meeting of defense and security chiefs on anti-poaching. During the meeting, Gen. Solly Shoke, chief of the South Africa National Defence Force (SANDF), said they were “close-knit member states” and must collectively deal with poaching to find a common long-term solution. After years of increases, South Africa saw a slight decline in the number of…

REUTERS Landlocked Ethiopia, which lost its access to the Red Sea nearly three decades ago, plans to build a Navy as part of military reforms.  The country disbanded its Navy in 1991 after its then-province Eritrea seceded in the wake of a three-decade war for independence. Ethiopia maintains a maritime institute that trains seafarers.  “Following the efforts made to build capacity of our national defense, we built one of the strongest ground and air forces in Africa,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said during a meeting with senior military officials. “We should build our naval force capacity in the future.” …

WORLD BANK  Photos by VINCENT TREMEAU/WORLD BANK Ousmane Diallo is a 35-year-old university graduate with a degree in sociology. He owns 8 hectares of farmland in Mandiana, one of the most remote places in Guinea, about 730 kilometers east of the capital, Conakry. Mining companies operate in the area, where artisanal mining provides an income to more than 80 percent of the local population. Unlike his peers in the mining sector, Diallo decided to invest in agriculture when he could not find a job, because he “understood the agricultural potential of the region.” When he started farming in 2014, he…

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION As a young boy chasing chickens on his parents’ farm in northern Uganda, Louis Lakor dreamed of becoming a teacher. But when he finally set foot in a local primary school at age 7, it was as an armed killer. Abducted in a night raid, Lakor was forced to become a child soldier with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group, which terrorized northern Uganda for nearly two decades before being driven out of the country by a military offensive in 2005. Clutching a gun handed to him by his kidnappers, Lakor was ordered to “shoot everything…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A southern white rhino that became pregnant through artificial insemination increases hopes that a nearly extinct close relative, the northern white rhino, can be saved. News that the female southern white rhino named Victoria was pregnant was seen as a breakthrough and a step toward saving the northern white rhino species. If Victoria is able to carry the calf to term, it will be born in mid-2019. The world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died in March 2018 at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, his home for 10 years after being transferred from a zoo in the…

VOICE OF AMERICA In Morocco, a giant solar power plant near the city of Ouarzazate soon will increase its capacity to 580 megawatts. Solar energy has been slower to arrive in West Africa than in some other parts of the continent, but growth is underway. West Africa’s largest solar power station officially opened in November 2017 in Zagtouli on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. It cost $55 million to build with funding from France and the European Union. Zagtouli now delivers 30 megawatts to the national power grid. Before Zagtouli, West Africa’s largest solar station was in Bokhol,…

REUTERS In this arid stretch of Kajiado County, Kenya, where worsening heat and drought have been tough on livestock farmers, Arnold Ole Kapurua is experimenting with a hot new crop: chilis. Ole Kapurua, 29, a farmer and agronomist, now grows 2 acres of the fiery pods — and is training other farmers to do the same — as a way to protect their incomes in the face of harsher weather linked to climate change. “With time we realized that we weren’t making good money as our livestock income stagnated,” he said. “During drought we lost our herds to hunger and…

ADF STAFF Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier, has taken stakes in a number of other carriers across Africa and opened routes to new destinations. It’s also expanding its fleet with the acquisition of its 100th plane. The expansion is part of the state-owned airline’s 2025 Vision to become the dominant aviation group in Africa and increase the share of the market occupied by African airlines. It has the largest fleet of any African airline, and the aviation intelligence group FlightGlobal says it now also has the most passengers each year, passing EgyptAir, South African Airways and Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc.…

ADF STAFF I teach kings the history of their ancestors, so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past. Those are the words of griot, or storyteller, Djeli Mamadou Kouyaté, in the opening part of a spoken history of Sundiata Keita, the first ruler of the Mali Empire. The spoken history, passed down by Mandinka griots for 800 years, is called Epic of Sundiata. No oral history is completely accurate, but the epic is supported in part by the writings of Muslim travelers who…

CLUES The national park that surrounds this formation includes Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. It is on the northern end of the Cape Fold Mountain range. It has a 3-kilometer plateau on top.  Legend says that the clouds blowing over the mountain are from a smoking contest between the devil and Dutch pirate Jan van Hunks. ANSWER  Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa