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AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A revamp of Liberia’s four seaports is pointing the way to an economic transformation that aims to put the ravages of this West African nation’s civil wars behind it. A decade after the end of the hostilities, mineral-rich Liberia is seeing an expansion of its industrial and manufacturing sectors on the back of economic growth that hit 8.9 percent in 2012. The transformation began in 2009, when the government took on Matilda Parker, a U.S.-educated private-sector management specialist, to become what remains the world’s only female port authority head. Her task was to turn around the fortunes of…

REUTERS IBM is rolling out its Watson supercomputer system across Africa, saying it will help address continental development obstacles as diverse as medical diagnoses, economic data collection and e-commerce research. The world’s biggest technology service provider, IBM said “Project Lucy” will take 10 years and cost $100 million. The undertaking was named after the earliest known human ancestor fossil, which was found in East Africa. “I believe it will spur a whole era of innovation for entrepreneurs here,” IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty told delegates at a conference in February 2014. As an example, Rometty described how Morocco has…

SABAHIONLINE.COM Kenyan police arrested two men in March 2014 who were illegally driving a vehicle in Mombasa that was later discovered to be packed with explosives. “We have not established where the target was, but we have detained two terror suspects who were in the vehicle,” said Henry Ondiek of the Mombasa Criminal Investigation Department, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Police said two homemade bombs were found in the vehicle, along with a mobile phone that could have been used as a detonator. “We were tipped off that the two were headed for an attack on an unspecified place, and…

VOICE OF AMERICA The countries around Lake Chad in Central Africa say they are expanding a joint task force to combat arms trafficking, terrorism and cross-border attacks as regional tensions escalate. The conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the insurgency in northern Nigeria are having a regional impact, pushing refugees, weapons and violence into neighboring countries. In response, defense and military chiefs from the six-member Lake Chad Basin Commission met in Cameroon and approved a multinational military task force to act against militant threats. Cameroon Defense Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o said the meeting was a sort of…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Nigerian Navy announced in March 2014 that it had destroyed 260 illegal oil refineries and burned 100,000 tons of contraband fuel to try to halt oil thefts that are bedeviling the economy of Africa’s largest petroleum producer. Commanding officer Capt. Musa Gemu said sailors of the NNS Delta destroyed the refineries in the Warri South-West area of the southern Delta region. The team also arrested five suspects. Similar missions in the past have failed to slow the estimated daily thefts of 200,000 barrels of oil worth more than $20 million. Critics and analysts say most oil…

Côte d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara [REUTERS] REUTERS Côte d’Ivoire is re-emerging as the prime investment destination in West Africa after a decade of political turmoil, but President Alassane Ouattara must weed out corruption and promote reconciliation to keep cash flowing in. Long considered the jewel in the crown of France’s former West African territories, a 1999 coup destroyed the reputation of Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer, as an island of stability in a troubled region. A bloody presidential election in 2000 and a rebellion two years later triggered an exodus of capital that undid decades of development, dubbed…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Angola announced $10 million in aid for the strife-torn Central African Republic, with a possible credit line in the future, during a visit by the CAR’s president in March 2014. Joaquim do Espirito Santo, Africa director in the Angolan Foreign Affairs Ministry, said the aid was to support the transitional government and to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. “There may be negotiations for an agreement opening a line of credit,” he said. Making an official two-day visit to Luanda, Angola, CAR Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza said there were “still peaks of violence” but that the general situation…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who as president was widely credited with returning peace to Sierra Leone after years of brutal civil war, died March 13, 2014, at his home in Freetown, the country’s capital. He was 82. Kabbah led Sierra Leone during and after an 11-year civil war in which 120,000 people were killed, many gruesomely. He was praised for instituting a disarmament program that led to the official end of the war in 2002, with the help of a United Nations peacekeeping force and British military trainers. But after the war, he was criticized for failing to lift…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A former minister became Nouakchott’s first female mayor in February 2014 after being voted in by councilors to head up the sprawling Mauritanian capital’s local authority. Maty Mint Hamady, 46, is an economics graduate from the University of Nouakchott and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Paris, one of Europe’s most prestigious graduate schools. A prominent member of the Union for the Republic, the ruling party of Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, she resigned as public services minister along with the rest of the cabinet, a routine step after national elections. About 1 million people — almost a…

Feature Image: Nigerian animator Ekene Nkenchor designs a video game at the Lagos offices of Kuluya, a video game company that is winning fans across the continent. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE] AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE It’s a common challenge in Nigeria and across Africa: how to get rid of pesky mosquitoes whose buzzing disturbs sleep and whose bites can carry malaria and other diseases. Two Nigerian startups have tapped this and other quirks of daily life in Africa to create online and mobile phone video games that are winning fans around the world. It’s easy to see why Mosquito Smasher, which has earned comparisons…