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ADF STAFF The Nigerian Navy announced plans to build commercial warships that can be exported to other African countries. Vice Adm. Dele Ezeoba, Nigeria’s chief of Naval Staff, made the announcement in November 2013 while inspecting the second patrol ship under construction for the Nigerian Navy at the Naval Dockyard on Victoria Island, Lagos. Ezeoba said the country’s shipbuilders are now skilled enough to build patrol ships between 10 meters and 38 meters long, according to the newspaper Punch. “The Nigerian Navy will no longer buy a ship of between 10 and 12 meters in size, because we have the…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The U.S. Department of Defense announced plans to train 5,000 to 8,000 Libyan Soldiers in a continuing effort to bolster security in the North African nation. Defense spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the Army will train the troops in Bulgaria on basic, general-purpose skills. The 24-week training program is part of a larger U.S. and international effort to shore up security in the country and region in the aftermath of the 2011 fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Militia violence increased in the final months of 2013 in sections of the country where the Army and police…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE In November 2013, Ghanaian authorities impounded a South American ship carrying 400 kilograms of cocaine and arrested its five-member crew, according to the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), Ghana’s anti-narcotics agency. The ship was registered in Guyana, and the street value of the drug was estimated at $50 million, authorities said. U.N. estimates place the drug value at approximately half that amount. “The vessel had been monitored at the high seas, and when she got into the Ghanaian waters, the Ghana Navy and NACOB officers arrested and escorted her to the Sekondi Naval Base,” authorities said in a statement.…

REUTERS West African neighbors Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire aim to settle a long-running dispute over their maritime boundary. The move could defuse sometimes-tense relations between the countries and smooth the way for oil and gas exploration. The countries have never officially defined the boundary, and their maps showing offshore waters currently overlap. Oil exploration in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea has accelerated since Ghana discovered its giant Jubilee oil and gas field in 2007 and brought it online in record time in late 2010. The field is estimated to hold 2 billion barrels of oil reserves and another 1.2 trillion cubic…

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION Asolar-powered mosquito trap is helping lower the incidence of malaria on Rusinga Island in Western Kenya. The device, invented by Kenyan and Dutch researchers, uses a solar roof panel to power an electric fan and mosquito zapper, installed on the outside of traditional tin-roofed mud and daub houses. Nylon strips, laced with artificial human scent, draw mosquitoes to the trap, and the fan sucks them into the device, the researchers said. Dr. Shanaz Sharif, Kenya’s director of public health, predicted the device could help “reduce the burden of public spending toward treating malaria, which is about $100…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Pioneering doctor Denis Mukwege has called for zero tolerance of rape in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo, where tens of thousands of women have been brutally attacked by the army and militia members. “I think we have drawn a red line [for some war crimes] but when it comes to using rape as a weapon of war, we equivocate,” he said in November 2013. Mukwege, who was in Stockholm to receive the Right Livelihood Award, has set up a hospital and foundation to treat rape victims. Women are frequent targets in conflict-torn eastern DRC, and the…

THE EASTAFRICAN Strong foreign investor participation in 2013 pushed regional stock markets in Africa to performance records. Most investors who put their money in the stock markets got handsome returns, especially at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), which closed 2013 as the best-performing market in Africa and fourth best in the world. Data analyzed by The EastAfrican indicates that investors showed a strong appetite for companies in the financial, manufacturing and investment sectors. “With relatively stable macro-economic factors, the country as a whole is poised for growth,” according to Old Mutual Securities. “However, a smooth transition which began [in 2012]…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE At a November 2013 summit in Kampala, Uganda, five East African countries signed a protocol to establish a monetary union, a first step toward creating a single currency. Leaders from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda inked the framework to set up a single market modeled after the eurozone. In addition to using a single currency, the East African Monetary Union is designed to result in the free movement of workers, goods, services and capital within the five countries, which have a combined population of 135 million. It would also lead to the creation of a customs union…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE From the sky, the 84 glimmering white turbines at Ashegoda wind farm shoot up from the ground like huge spokes, standing out high amid vast expanses of yellow wheat. Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, mostly populated by cattle farmers who grow the country’s staple grains, is an unlikely site for a modern French-run wind farm, Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest. With its multibillion-dollar projects in wind, hydropower, solar and geothermal energy, Ethiopia’s pioneering green energy efforts aim to supply power to its nearly 94 million people and boost its economy by exporting power to neighboring countries. “Ethiopia stands alone in Africa…

REUTERS Deep in the bowels of the giant Inga hydroelectric dam that straddles the mighty Congo River stands a fading map named “The motorways of electric power from Inga.” From a dot in the western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), lines extend across the African continent. They run south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and north to Sudan and Libya, reaching as far as Morocco. For decades, governments dreamed of harnessing the Congo River’s enormous energy at the Inga rapids with an expansion of the dam that is large enough to power half of Africa. Years of conflict…