ADF

ADF STAFF On Christmas Day in 2023, fighters commonly called “bandits” killed more than 115 people in northern Nigeria. The bandits destroyed more than 220 homes in about 10 communities. They killed more than 400 people in Plateau State in attacks in the last quarter of 2023, the Jamestown Foundation reported. In the past decade, northwest Nigeria has become increasingly infested with bandits working as criminal gangs. Banditry involves crimes such as murder and kidnapping, but it also includes nonstate armed groups such as Boko Haram factions, separatist groups and militants. The International Peace Institute notes that although some of…

ADF STAFF Russia has added more armed men to its Sahel operations, this time in the form of the Bear Brigade, which has operated in Burkina Faso since May. Experts say the Bear Brigade is among an estimated 300 Russian security operatives in Burkina Faso, which includes members of Russian military intelligence, the GRU. About 30 Bear Brigade members have taken up residence in Ouagadougou and two nearby military bases. They are training forces loyal to junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré and enhancing his personal security apparatus after an alleged countercoup attempt in September 2023. Experts say Traoré is an…

ADF STAFF Cyberattackers are using a new, low-cost weapon to disrupt internet access to media sites across Africa — one that is difficult to defend against and rapidly proliferating. The method of attack, called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is a time-tested way to shut down sites by overwhelming their systems with incoming internet traffic. A DDoS often targets high-profile or important sites such as government services or media operations to sow distrust. Attacks on media sites, in particular, can prevent them from distributing news the attackers want to hide. In some cases, governments might launch DDoS attacks to censor or…

ADF STAFF Three journalists critical of Burkina Faso’s military junta were kidnapped over a 10-day period in June. At least one of them, Serge Oulon, editor of the newspaper L’Événement, was abducted by a group of armed men claiming to be from the National Intelligence Agency, according to Reporters Without Borders. Kalifara Séré, who appeared on the program “7Infos” on the private television channel BF1, went missing the day after he attended a hearing with judicial police. Séré had recently questioned the authenticity of footage of junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré donating blood. The nation’s media regulator temporarily suspended “7Infos.” Several Western news…

ADF STAFF Across a continent where militias pose significant dangers, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan stands alone among the cautionary tales. Its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, seized power alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in a 2019 coup, but their alliance collapsed in 2023, hurling the country into a devastating civil war. Federico Manfredi Firmian, a political science lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris, has spent more than a decade researching insurgents, paramilitaries, militias and other armed groups. Some are engaged in long-term plans for state capture. “The Rapid Support Forces followed a strategy which…

ADF STAFF The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared its first public health emergency on August 13 as mpox, a virus commonly known as “monkeypox,” spread into several countries that never had reported cases. A variant of the clade I strain, the more lethal of two clades, has spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. The countries reported their first-ever mpox infections in the month leading up to August 13, according to the journal Nature. The DRC reported nearly 2,400 suspected cases and 56 deaths in one week in early…

ADF STAFF When the Sudanese Armed Forces retook a key neighborhood in the city of Omdurman from the Rapid Support Forces in March, soldiers discovered four passports belonging to residents of the United Arab Emirates, the RSF’s silent partner in its war for control of Sudan. According to a United Nations report, the four passports belonged to men ages 29 to 49 who are thought to be UAE intelligence officers. They are the first indication that, despite its denials, the UAE quietly has placed operatives on the ground in Sudan, expanding its ongoing, secret support for RSF fighters. “This makes…

ADF STAFF In the decades after the Congo Wars of the 1990s, widespread armed conflict has touched the lives of nearly everyone in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recent reports revealed the tangled morass of parties who are engaged in and around the battlegrounds of the North and South Kivu regions, where unabated violence continues to threaten a return of broader regional conflicts. “Neighboring countries are involved in a variety of ways,” Professor Kristof Titeca of Antwerp University wrote in an August 20 article for The Conversation Africa magazine. “Understanding, or solving, the conflict needs…

ADF STAFF Confusion reigned for days after flash floods and landslides killed at least 91 people in the central Kenya town of Mai Mahiu in April. Police initially blamed a burst dam, but the government later said debris had blocked a railroad river tunnel. “The water swept the railway line and started moving downstream with a very high speed and velocity causing destruction of property and loss of lives,” the Ministry of Water reported. Antony Muchiri, emergency response manager at Kenya Red Cross, said unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, played a key role in the country’s response to widespread flooding.…

ADF STAFF Massive redwood trees tower above the floor of central Kenya’s Aberdare National Park, home to an array of animal species, including antelope, buffalo, elephants and endangered species such as black rhinos, mountain bongos, black and white colobus monkeys and the African golden cat. The 767-square-kilometer park, featuring moorlands, mountains and rainforests, is also a hotspot for wildlife poaching and illegal logging. One recent day, a group of uniformed men and one woman, flanked by armed rangers, moved quietly through a thicket overrun by the forest’s stinging nettles. Wilson Gioko, the group’s leader, spotted a mound of fresh dung…