ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE French and British air force chiefs vowed to pursue the joint fight against extremists in the heart of the Sahel, even as the shadow of Brexit loomed over their countries.  “We’ve got a long, fabulous history of working alongside each other, and I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon,” Royal Air Force Chief of the Air Staff Mike Wigston told AFP on a visit to the Malian city of Gao with French counterpart Philippe Lavigne. “If anything, we are going to work stronger together.” Backed by 100 British personnel, France has a 4,500-strong Sahel force supporting national…

U.S. AFRICA COMMAND U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) hosted senior members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) to discuss long-term defense and security planning. Representatives of AFRICOM’s five component commands, the U.S Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Embassy to Ghana and the Ghana Armed Forces attended and discussed the component commands’ three- to five-year training objectives with Ghana. “The Ghana Armed Forces are well-known in West Africa as professional armed forces,” said Ghanaian Maj. Gen. Thomas Oppong-Peprah, chief of army staff. “We have similar values and respect human rights. … The U.S. knows this and sees…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Mozambican authorities detained 12 Iranians suspected of shipping drugs off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado.  The boat was intercepted in December 2019 in a joint operation carried out by the Mozambique Navy and the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC).  Authorities intercepted the boat about 50 kilometers from the Mozambican coast. The suspects are said to have set it on fire moments before their arrest.  Police say the fire destroyed about 1.5 metric tons of heroin suspected to be on board.  Vessel crew members then jumped into the Mozambique Channel and were rescued…

REUTERS Nigeria and neighbors Benin and Niger have agreed to set up a joint border patrol force to tackle smuggling among the West African countries. Foreign ministers from the three countries met to discuss smuggling after Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy and biggest population, decided to close its land borders to trade through at least January 31, 2020.  Nigeria launched a partial border closure to tackle the smuggling of rice and other goods. After that, all trade via land borders was halted indefinitely.  The joint communique from the meeting in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, said Benin’s and Niger’s delegations had…

VOICE OF AMERICA Cameroon’s military arrested several dozen men and destroyed hundreds of handmade guns circulating on the northern border with Chad and Nigeria. In a public event, a military compactor crushed more than 2,500 guns, ammunition and other weapons the military says it seized from smugglers, hostage takers, poachers and suspected Boko Haram fighters.  Regine Esseneme, head of Cameroon’s Department of Justice in the northern town of Garoua, said she wants to send a clear message that there will be no safe haven for criminals operating in the border region of Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria. She said the three…

REUTERS Portuguese architect Tania Monteiro and her husband are almost alone as they tour Sudan’s pyramids, a world-class attraction long neglected by the world. “People are really, really nice, always very welcoming,” Monteiro said on a visit to Meroe, an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile River about 200 kilometers northeast of the capital, Khartoum. Sudan has more, though smaller, pyramids than Egypt, but attracted only about 700,000 tourists in 2018 compared to 10 million in its northern neighbor. Conflicts and crises under former ruler Omar al-Bashir, a tough visa regime, and a lack of roads and…

VOICE OF AMERICA Grace Chakudza gave birth in November 2019 to a healthy baby boy — her fourth child — at  Achikondi Community Clinic. It opened in 2008 to help poor women safely give birth. Since then, the clinic has performed more than 8,800 successful deliveries without the loss of mother or child, according to its founder. That’s a record number in Malawi, where the United Nations Children’s Fund says the average mortality rate per 1,000 births is 22 deaths for babies and six for mothers. Chakudza appreciates the care she got from the clinic. “There is a big difference,”…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Fifteen-year-old Divina Maloum of Cameroon has won a children’s international peace prize for her work with young people who have suffered extremist violence, particularly in the north of her country. The prize was awarded by Dutch organization KidsRights, which says it wants children to be recognized for their efforts to improve their own situation. In 2014, the Cameroonian teenager founded the Children for Peace movement to work with child victims of terror. She goes to communities to talk to children about their rights and tell them that they do not have to be drawn into the…

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…