ADF

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Officials arrested a Nigerian man behind an online fraud network that engineered $60 million in scams and took in hundreds of victims worldwide. The scams originated in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, according to the international police agency Interpol. The arrest was carried out with the support of Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). “In one case, a target was conned into paying out $15.4 million,” Interpol said. “The network compromised email accounts of small to medium businesses around the world.” The suspect ran a network of at least 40 people working…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Japan announced plans to invest $30 billion in African projects by 2018, including $10 billion in infrastructure development. The announcement came at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Nairobi, Kenya, in August 2016. Thirty African heads of state attended. “This is an investment that has faith in Africa’s future,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. This marked the first time that the Tokyo International Conference on African Development was held in Africa. All five previous events were in Japan. The goal of the conference, organized jointly by the United Nations, the African Union, the World Bank…

REUTERS African nations are taking part in a global effort to preserve the seas for future generations. The United States joined more than 20 countries in announcing the creation of 40 new marine sanctuaries around the world to protect the ocean from climate change and pollution. The pledges came as part of the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., in September 2016. Among those pledging to create protected areas were Morocco, the Republic of the Congo and the Seychelles. The protected areas are meant to limit commercial development and human impacts on ocean ecosystems. Altogether, countries attending the conference announced…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Britain, the European Union and the World Bank have announced a plan to create 100,000 jobs in Ethiopia to help tackle the migrant crisis. Two industrial parks will be built in the country at a cost of $500 million. Ethiopia, which proposed the plan, will be required to grant employment rights to 30,000 refugees. United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May said the project would be a model for how to support poorer countries housing large numbers of migrants. Ethiopia hosts more than 700,000 asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan. The deal, announced at…

ADF STAFF The Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF) is playing a key role in distributing aid and rebuilding infrastructure after the earthquake that struck the far north of the country. In September 2016, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake killed 17 people and injured 360 in Bukoba. After the quake, President John Magufuli ordered the TPDF to assist where possible. “The disaster committee has asked the TPDF members to chip in, and they have already responded by allocating its engineering unit and some medical officers ready for the tasks,” Kagera Regional Commissioner Salim Kijuu, a retired major general, told Tanzania’s Daily News.…

ADF STAFF A Nigerian Army operation led to the release of 566 people from the hands of Boko Haram. Many of those released were children of the extremist group’s members. Among those freed in the September 2016 operation in the northeastern state of Borno were 355 babies. Brig. Gen. Victor Ezegwu of the Nigerian Army’s 7 Division handed over the former captives to state Gov. Kashim Shettima at a rehabilitation center run in partnership with the United Nations’ children agency, UNICEF, where they will receive medical care, Bloomberg News reported. Boko Haram has terrorized northeast Nigeria since 2009, when the group…

ADF STAFF A joint effort by Mauritanian security forces led to the seizure of 1 ton of cocaine at the Nouadhibou seaport. The Army, Coast Guard, military police and other police forces launched the coordinated operation at the port more than 400 kilometers north of the capital, Nouakchott, in August 2016 after authorities were tipped off that a vessel was carrying the drug, the North African Post reported. The vessel’s port of origin was not known, but authorities have launched investigations to identify accomplices. Mauritania has become a main West African transit point for drugs bound for Western Europe. In…

MEDIA CLUB SOUTH AFRICA In 2001, there were 56,000 pairs of African penguins in South Africa. By 2014, there were just 19,000 pairs. This drastic decline has prompted BirdLife South Africa to try something it has never done before to prevent the penguin from going extinct. Led by Christina Hagen, BirdLife South Africa wants to establish a new African penguin colony that will help increase the species’ numbers. “The penguins need all the help they can get,” said BirdLife chief executive Mark Anderson. “Establishing new mainland colonies are immensely important management interventions.” Two major populations of the birds remain, made…

NGALA KILLIAN CHIMTOM/INTER PRESS SERVICE Cameroon is reaching out to children of the Baka Tribe, trying to get them to pursue education without forsaking their tribal traditions. Almost all Baka children who enroll in primary school leave before advancing to the secondary level. A number of factors contribute to inadequate education for the Baka people, including poverty, discrimination and an ill-adapted educational policy. Of the 30 Baka children who initially enrolled in 2014 at one school, only one remains. The others dropped out to join their parents in their traditional Baka hunter-gatherer role. David Angoula, a Baka parent whose two…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE They have proven their worth in detecting land mines, and now Africa’s giant pouched rats are demonstrating another surprising skill — saving lives by helping to detect tuberculosis. It’s all in the nose, says the Belgian nongovernmental organization APOPO. Its founders, in 1997, saw potential for these abundant rodents that possess a sense of smell as keen as a dog’s but are dismissed as vermin. “The biggest obstacle has been the negative perception that people have of the rat,” said APOPO director Christophe Cox, whose NGO has been based in Morogoro in Tanzania’s eastern highlands since 2000. That…