ADF

Mauritania and the European Union (EU) announced in July 2015 that they had signed a “win-win” fishing accord after 16 months of heated debate. The EU bloc will contribute $112 million per year to Mauritania’s fishing industry, down from the $120 million it gave under the previous deal. The European fleet’s quota is reduced from an annual 300,000 metric tons of fish to 225,000 over the four-year contract. Stefaan Depypere, EU international affairs and markets director, said during a ceremony that the deal benefits both sides. Mauritanian negotiator Cheikh Ould Baya said exclusive rights on octopus and sardinella for local…

The United States and the African Union signed an agreement on April 13, 2015, to create the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chairwoman of the African Union Commission, signed a memorandum of cooperation formalizing the collaboration between the AU and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the nation’s top agency for studying and fighting disease. “The West African Ebola epidemic reaffirmed the need for a public health institute to support African ministries of health and other health agencies in their efforts to prevent, detect,…

The U.S. donated $850,000 worth of military gear to Zambia to help protect the country’s peacekeepers during their deployment in the Central African Republic. The gear includes uniforms, helmets, boots and other protective items, the Times of Zambia reported. The donation was made by U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Eric Schultz at an event in March 2015 at the Arakan Barracks in Lusaka. “Zambia’s commitment to peace in Africa is admirable, and the United States salutes Zambia’s decision to join the United Nations mission in protecting innocent civilians, women and children in the Central African Republic,” Schultz said, according to mwebantu.com.…

When Kenyan police arrested six men in the vast Dadaab refugee camp near the Somali border in April 2015, their aim was to dismantle a decades-old sugar-smuggling trade that is funding Somali militants waging war on Kenya. The arrests, coming weeks after four al-Shabaab gunmen massacred 148 people at nearby Garissa University College, were part of Nairobi’s new strategy to choke off the flow of money to militants whose cross-border raids have hammered Kenya and its tourism industry. Although cash from sugar smuggling may amount to only a few million dollars, experts say such sums are enough for attacks that…

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu is lending his support to a campaign to ensure the rights of older people. The Nobel laureate wants the issue included in the new United Nations Sustainable Development Goals scheduled to be finished in late 2015. Nearly 900 million people are age 60 and over, representing 12 percent of the world’s population, Help Age International estimated. Tutu, 84, joined the organization’s Action 2015 campaign. “As we get older, our bodies change,” he said. “We lose some of our dexterity and physical strength. But our rights do not change. We may have fewer teeth, but we are…

There is abundant evidence that poorer people in Africa are now using the Internet. In South Africa, many new users live in poverty. Declining costs are driving the trend. Most people in Africa connect to the Internet with mobile devices, and the price of these is falling. Nokia, for example, launched a $29 Internet phone in 2015. Pay-as-you-go data can be purchased in small bundles in many African countries, sometimes in 10-cent increments. The most reliable survey conducted in 11 countries in 2011 and 2012 found that about one in three South Africans, one in four Kenyans and fewer than…

The Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, where 67 people were killed in an attack by al-Shabaab militants, has reopened. Gunmen entered the Kenyan mall in September 2013 and fired on shoppers, leading to a four-day siege. As of mid-July 2015, about half the shops were opening again after an extensive refurbishment. “Exactly 22 months ago we had one of the saddest days in Kenyan history,” Nairobi City County Gov. Evans Kidero said. “As a nation we cried, we mourned, but Westgate is back.” Parts of the mall were badly damaged by fire and remained off-limits as journalists toured the building…

A water filter that absorbs anything from copper and fluoride to bacteria, viruses and pesticides has won a prestigious innovation prize. Its inventor, Tanzanian chemical engineer Askwar Hilonga, uses nanotechnology and sand to clean water. He told the BBC his invention should help the 70 percent of households in Tanzania that do not have clean drinking water. The water filter already has been trademarked. The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, worth $38,000, was the first of its kind from the United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Engineering. Head judge Malcolm Brinded said, “His innovation could change the lives of many Africans…

Djibouti and Ethiopia have completed a railway linking their two capitals, with the hope that the link might eventually extend across the continent to West Africa. In June 2015, Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn attended the ceremonial laying of the last track in the 752-kilometer railway, linking the port capital of Djibouti with landlocked Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The first scheduled train was expected to use the desert line in October 2015, reducing transport time between the capitals to less than 10 hours, rather than the two days it had taken for trucks using…

In the mid-1980s, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was officially exporting up to 130,000 tons of coffee per year, but by 2012 that figure had shriveled to 8,000 tons, owing to war, coffee disease, low prices and smuggling. But international buyers of specialty, high-quality coffee started to realize they had been missing out. In 2012, the World Coffee Research Institute, after doing a survey of the two Kivu provinces in eastern DRC, described the area as “a paradise for coffee.” That same year saw a Congolese coffee cooperative break into the world specialty market, helped by the United…