ADF

REUTERS The European Union has signed a development grant with Ethiopia worth $287.26 million to help finance road construction and projects targeting maternal health and drought resilience. As of 2014, Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous country after Nigeria, was midway through a five-year economic plan that foresees almost tripling the country’s road network and beginning the building of 5,000 kilometers of new railway lines. Addis Ababa’s big infrastructure push is aimed at connecting remote regions and has propelled the economy to double-digit growth for much of the past decade. Once run by communists, Ethiopia’s economy is now Sub-Saharan Africa’s fifth-biggest, leap-frogging Kenya…

REUTERS At Cape Town’s Elswood Secondary School, even the metal grills welded into its walls did not deter burglars from ripping out the copper cables that delivered Internet service to the students. But Elswood’s pupils were saved by alternative technology — free wireless connection via unused parts of the TV spectrum known as white space. It’s being provided by a consortium led by Google as part of a wider trial. Africa is the world’s last major untapped market for Internet access. Only 16 percent of its billion people use the Internet — half the penetration rate of Asia, according to…

REUTERS Tanzania, famed for its safari parks beneath snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, estimated that it attracted 40 percent more tourists in 2013 than in 2012. The country estimated it hosted 1.5 million visitors as it broke into new Asian markets. In the year ending in September 2013, tourism earned more hard currency than gold exports for the first time in years. Tourism raked in $1.8 billion in the 12 months ending in September 2013, up from $1.61 billion a year earlier. The country is intensifying efforts to tackle poaching of elephant ivory and rhino horns. Poaching has surged across Sub-Saharan Africa,…

MAGHAREBIA.COM In a move described as the largest border mobilization in recent history, Algeria announced in October 2013 that it would send thousands of troops to secure the eastern and southern frontiers to halt the infiltration of terrorists. “Algeria is making a considerable contribution in the fight against terrorism and organized crime,” Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said at a news conference. “The Army and security forces are working to strengthen national security and are aiming for the country to become a source of stability for neighboring and sisterly countries.” The Algerian Army also tightened security measures on its eastern…

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…