ADF

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION Beekeeper Ayenalem Ketema is the proud owner of three hives, which have produced enough honey for the young Ethiopian to build a house equipped with solar panels and buy some farm animals with the proceeds. Ketema, who lives in Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia, left school when she was 17 and has kept bees for four years. “I have benefited a lot from using a modern beehive,” said the young farmer, now 22. She belongs to the Boter Boro Cooperative, whose members run 50 beehives among them. With the profit from the 60 kilograms of honey she harvests…

MEDIA CLUB SOUTH AFRICA Although Africa has among the lowest higher education enrollment rates in the world, the 21st century has seen huge growth in virtually all its tertiary education systems. In Uganda, where Makerere University traditionally dominated national higher education, half a dozen public universities have opened since 1988. As a result, enrollment has grown from less than 10,000 in the 1990s to nearly 200,000 today. In Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous country, growth in higher education has been phenomenal — from two institutions in the early 1990s to the current 35. Nigeria, with 1.7 million students, has comparable enrollment figures…

SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT NEWS AGENCY South Africa’s Trade and Industry deputy minister is pushing for increased trade between his country and neighboring Zimbabwe. Deputy Minister Mzwandile Masina spoke at a March 2016 dinner hosted by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Macro-Economic Planning and Investment Promotion. The dinner was part of the Investment and Trade Initiative to Harare, Gweru and Bulawayo, organized by the Department of Trade and Industry. “As neighbors, it is incumbent upon us to work together closely in ensuring that we increase trade between our countries and achieve economic growth,” Masina said. “The role of business in this mission…

ADF STAFF In November 1922, Teferi Mekonen, an Ethiopian nobleman, visited a British Royal Air Force  show in Yemen’s coastal city of Aden. Airplanes were big news, having been invented less than 20 years earlier. The young Ethiopian had never seen an airplane up close and was fascinated. He asked whether it would be possible for his country to buy one. It is said that the British were somewhat put off by the request, coming from this 5-foot-2-inch Ethiopian aristocrat, and may have ridiculed him, telling him to stick with his country’s horses. The Ethiopian was not to be denied.…

This area covers 400,000 hectares and includes 289 villages. The Tellem people lived here, mostly in caves, between the 11th and 16th centuries. The Dogon people succeeded the Tellem and live in the region to this day. The majority of the area is covered by plateaus and cliffs. ANSWER: The Cliff of Bandiagara, Mali

U.S. Africa Command Staff There’s no escaping the importance of logistics. Without the ability to effectively move and sustain troops, commanders’ plans aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. In short, logistics can be the difference between a mission’s success and failure. This fact is agonizingly clear on the African continent, where conflicts erupt in regions that are difficult to reach by air or land. This remoteness hampers peacekeeping efforts and costs lives. The African Union recognizes the challenge, and logistics is a key component of its newly operational African Standby Force (ASF). To attain the goal of “silencing the…

This exercise demonstrates that Africa is serious about peace and that the continent is also serious about investing in peace. We often proclaim that we want African solutions to African problems. Through this exercise, we are demonstrating that readiness to solve our problems on the continent. We are indeed proud to proclaim today that Amani Africa II has been a tremendous success. We have taken a significant step toward bringing the African Standby Force and its Rapid Deployment Capability into operation. We have committed ourselves to silencing the guns on our continent by 2020, in alignment with our commitment to…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE At Lighthouse Grace Academy in Nairobi’s Kwangware suburb, students are using a new learning tool. It’s the “Kio Kit,” a digital classroom in a suitcase designed by local technology company BRCK. “The Kio Kit is a way to turn any classroom into a digital classroom,” said Nivi Mukherjee of BRCK Education, the subsidiary that launched the product in September 2015. “You open the box, and there are 40 tablets inside; there is a BRCK inside, and on the BRCK there is a Linux [open-source] server — so we can locally cache educational content and serve it up to…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE More than 1,000 Nigerians, out of the thousands who fled attacks by Boko Haram jihadists to neighboring countries, returned to their homeland at the end of 2015. Between December 14 and December 16, 1,187 Nigerians who had been sheltering across the border in Cameroon resettled in a refugee camp in the northeastern state of Adamawa “as a result of improvement in the security situation,” National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Sani Datti said. An additional 15,000 Nigerians were expected to return to their country in subsequent weeks, Datti said. Since August 2015, thousands of Nigerian citizens have come back…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Morocco has launched the Noor 1 Ouarzazate solar thermal plant, the most ambitious project yet from a country determined to be a leader in clean energy. The giant plant will harness the sun’s energy to melt salt, which will hold its heat to power a steam turbine in the evenings. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI unveiled the Saudi-built plant — one of the world’s biggest — on February 4, 2016, The Associated Press reported. The mirrors will cover a space as large as the country’s capital, Rabat. The first phase will generate for three hours after dark.…