ADF

Enlisting the Support of Citizens, and Rewarding Them, Can Pay Off in the Fight Against Terrorism ADF STAFF As Somalia’s national elections took place in February 2017, government and African Union forces took action to head off violence aimed at spoiling a peaceful transfer of power. Officials moved the election, in which members of Parliament voted for president, from a police academy in Mogadishu to an aircraft hangar at Aden Adde International Airport. Security measures included a ban on flights to and from the airport, a traffic shutdown and a no-fly zone over the city, the BBC reported. Even so,…

Pirates are attacking ships in Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea, and coastal nations will have to work together to stop them. ADF STAFF In February 2016, 14 Nigerian and Ghanaian pirates hijacked the Maximus, a Panama-flagged oil tanker, about 100 kilometers off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire. Eighteen crew members, representing six countries, were aboard. The pirates planned to sell the ship’s 4,700 tons of diesel fuel on the black market. The pirates even changed the ship’s name to Elvis 3 to avoid being tracked. The navies of several countries in the region, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo,…

New laws and tactics are needed to catch extremists online ADF STAFF In July 2017, as Iraqi forces were pushing ISIS out of the city of Mosul, authorities found a 16-year-old girl hiding in a tunnel. She had run away from her home in Germany a year earlier to join the extremist group. She had gotten her plane ticket by posing as her mother. Pictures of the sad, frightened-looking girl, surrounded by her smiling captors, were published and posted on the internet all over the world. The girl had been raised in a Protestant family but had shown little interest…

Facebook struggles to control a black market in Libya. ADF STAFF With nearly 2 billion active accounts, Facebook has something for almost everyone. That includes black market rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles. Such weapons are offered on Facebook in Libya, where dictator Moammar Gadhafi accumulated more than $30 billion in arms before he was overthrown in 2011. After he was killed, officials, rebels and looters found weapons stashes all over the country, not only in military depots, but also buried in the Sahara desert. The weapons have spread throughout the continent on the black market. A 2014 United Nations report…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS African players will have a better chance to play for European clubs now that the Africa Cup of Nations will take place in the summer, say leading agents. The tournament, held every two years, is being moved to June and July from January and February. Previously, Premier League clubs were among those who faced losing players midseason for weeks as they went to play for their home nations. “It’ll make my job easier as an agent. Clubs use it as an excuse not to sign African players,” said Papa Agyemang. “They will become more attractive because…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE “I haven’t once spoken my mother tongue Kilokele in the 62 years I’ve lived in Kinshasa,” says Charles Tongohala. “None of my nine children speak it.” Tongohala’s native tongue is one of 450 spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the sprawling nation of 71 million people whose languages — almost all of them spoken, not written — account for 9 percent of the world’s 5,000 languages. He was a boy when he moved to the capital from a northeastern village that is home to the Lokele fisher people, who live along the banks of the giant…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE In Nigeria, jollof rice isn’t just a tasty dish — it’s a national obsession. Dozens of top Nigerian chefs gathered for Lagos’ inaugural jollof festival in August 2017, showcasing their personal twists on the tangy, tomatoey rice to a crowd of hundreds of hungry foodies. Imoteda Aladekomo, a 31-year-old chef who has been making jollof for four years, has led the way in reinventing the national staple, creating several variants through her company, Eko Street Eats. “It’s so popular because it’s easy to customize,” she said while preparing take-away boxes at the jollof fair. “Rice is really easy…

SABC The African Union announced it has begun collecting funds from member states as part of a larger effort to pay for peacekeeping on the continent. Dr. Donald Kaberuka, AU high representative for the financing of the Peace Fund, delivered an update on the fund to the United Nations Security Council. The fund is projected to be responsible for 25 percent of AU peace operations and support costs by 2020. Predictable financing for peace efforts on the continent has long been an AU goal. Members of the Heads of State Summit of the organization first endorsed the AU Peace Fund…

VOICE OF AMERICA Cameroon and Nigeria are touting a naval partnership that lets them clamp down on piracy, trafficking and illegal fishing. The latest success story occurred in May 2017 when the Cameroonian naval vessel Le Ntem was traveling through Nigerian territorial waters and encountered a suspicious fishing vessel. Capt. Fabrice Ntieuche of the Cameroon Navy said the vessel disobeyed instructions to stop until authorities threatened to use force. He said all the occupants aboard the fishing boat were arrested. Ntieuche said ships on patrol don’t hesitate to threaten force, including firing warning shots, since the area around Calabar once…

SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE FORCE COUNCIL South African Air Force (SAAF) helicopters performed emergency firefighting and rescue operations in Western Cape in June 2017. Over the course of a day, the helicopters dropped nearly 720,000 liters of water onto the raging fires. They also flew rescue missions, including to Buffels Bay, where fires forced residents onto the beach. The three Oryx medium transport helicopters were based at Port Elizabeth and dropped the contents of 359 buckets onto fires burning in the towns of Knysna, George and Plettenberg Bay. SAAF personnel reported 408 houses were burned down in Knysna with more than…