ADF

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu is lending his support to a campaign to ensure the rights of older people. The Nobel laureate wants the issue included in the new United Nations Sustainable Development Goals scheduled to be finished in late 2015. Nearly 900 million people are age 60 and over, representing 12 percent of the world’s population, Help Age International estimated. Tutu, 84, joined the organization’s Action 2015 campaign. “As we get older, our bodies change,” he said. “We lose some of our dexterity and physical strength. But our rights do not change. We may have fewer teeth, but we are…

There is abundant evidence that poorer people in Africa are now using the Internet. In South Africa, many new users live in poverty. Declining costs are driving the trend. Most people in Africa connect to the Internet with mobile devices, and the price of these is falling. Nokia, for example, launched a $29 Internet phone in 2015. Pay-as-you-go data can be purchased in small bundles in many African countries, sometimes in 10-cent increments. The most reliable survey conducted in 11 countries in 2011 and 2012 found that about one in three South Africans, one in four Kenyans and fewer than…

The Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, where 67 people were killed in an attack by al-Shabaab militants, has reopened. Gunmen entered the Kenyan mall in September 2013 and fired on shoppers, leading to a four-day siege. As of mid-July 2015, about half the shops were opening again after an extensive refurbishment. “Exactly 22 months ago we had one of the saddest days in Kenyan history,” Nairobi City County Gov. Evans Kidero said. “As a nation we cried, we mourned, but Westgate is back.” Parts of the mall were badly damaged by fire and remained off-limits as journalists toured the building…

A water filter that absorbs anything from copper and fluoride to bacteria, viruses and pesticides has won a prestigious innovation prize. Its inventor, Tanzanian chemical engineer Askwar Hilonga, uses nanotechnology and sand to clean water. He told the BBC his invention should help the 70 percent of households in Tanzania that do not have clean drinking water. The water filter already has been trademarked. The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, worth $38,000, was the first of its kind from the United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Engineering. Head judge Malcolm Brinded said, “His innovation could change the lives of many Africans…

Djibouti and Ethiopia have completed a railway linking their two capitals, with the hope that the link might eventually extend across the continent to West Africa. In June 2015, Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn attended the ceremonial laying of the last track in the 752-kilometer railway, linking the port capital of Djibouti with landlocked Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The first scheduled train was expected to use the desert line in October 2015, reducing transport time between the capitals to less than 10 hours, rather than the two days it had taken for trucks using…

In the mid-1980s, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was officially exporting up to 130,000 tons of coffee per year, but by 2012 that figure had shriveled to 8,000 tons, owing to war, coffee disease, low prices and smuggling. But international buyers of specialty, high-quality coffee started to realize they had been missing out. In 2012, the World Coffee Research Institute, after doing a survey of the two Kivu provinces in eastern DRC, described the area as “a paradise for coffee.” That same year saw a Congolese coffee cooperative break into the world specialty market, helped by the United…

Twenty-six African countries have launched a framework to create a free trade area by integrating three trade blocs to boost regional trade and investment. The tripartite area announced in June 2015 will include the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. It will boast a combined gross domestic product of more than $1 trillion. Some of Africa’s largest economies, including South Africa and Kenya, are among the 26 nations. Official negotiations have also begun for the establishment of a free trade area to embrace the entire continent of 54 countries,…

Samori Touré was a great warrior, a natural leader and an empire builder. But he is perhaps best remembered, and honored, for his role in his later years — defiant to the end to his would-be conquerors. Almost 60 years after his death, his grandson was equally defiant. Touré was born in about 1830 in what is now Guinea. Like his father, he became a merchant. That ended when he was 20 and his mother was kidnapped in a slave raid. The young but already-skilled merchant-negotiator bargained with her captor, offering to serve in his army in exchange for his…

CLUES This attraction is part of Africa’s largest conservation area. The name of this area translates literally as “dead-end marsh.” A nearby river fills the large salt-and-clay pan during exceptional rainy seasons. Surrounding dunes can be up to 400 meters tall, making them some of the highest in the world. ANSWER: The salt desert of Sossusvlei, in Namibia’s Namib-Naukluft National Park

As Africa enjoys unprecedented economic growth, it is looking for ways to protect and expand this prosperity for years to come. During its 50th anniversary celebrations, African Union leaders pointed to the continent’s “blue economy,” the trade and industry linked to the sea, as vital to sustaining that growth in the coming decades. “Africa being a big island, there is a need to have a better understanding of all activities in its adjoining oceans and seas, and think seriously how to maximize the limitless opportunities laying therein,” said Erastus Mwencha, deputy chairman of the African Union Commission. Protecting the blue…