ADF

A Commitment to Voluntary Security Principles in Ghana Helps Protect Oil Wealth and a Way of Life ADF STAFF When Ghana’s Jubilee oil field was discovered in 2007, it had the potential to be a game changer for the West African nation. With as many as 3 billion barrels of sweet crude oil sitting just 60 kilometers offshore, Ghana had joined an exclusive club of oil-producing countries. Revenue from the site promised to pay for improved public services, infrastructure and to help lift many Ghanaians out of poverty. Years later, oil has begun to flow at a rate of about…

African Nations Move Beyond Their Borders in Adopting Standards for Their Militaries and Police Forces ADF STAFF In an impressive show of unity, more than 1,000 people representing 25 African Union nations met in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in June 2013. Their goal: Stop crime in the Gulf of Guinea. The representatives, including 13 heads of state, adopted a document called “Code of Conduct Concerning the Repression of Piracy, Armed Robbery Against Ships, and Illicit Maritime Activity in West and Central Africa.” The document recognized codes of conduct already adopted by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community…

Security Professionals Weigh the Risks and Rewards of Partnering with Non-State Security Actors ADF STAFF In May 2013, a group of young men in northern Nigeria’s Borno State decided to fight back against Boko Haram. Crudely armed with sticks, machetes and garden implements, they set up roadblocks and fanned out on foot patrol. They inspected cars for bombs or weapons and gathered information from the community to make “citizen’s arrests” of suspected extremists. Their formation roughly corresponded with the state of emergency declared in three northern states, so they decided to call themselves the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) in…

The country’s rebirth after its civil war sets a new standard for reconstitution of the military ADF STAFF When Sierra Leone’s civil war ended in January 2002, the country was in shambles. Some 50,000 people had died, and more than 2 million people — a third of the population — were refugees. There had been atrocities. Buildings and roads were destroyed. The country’s records were gone. There was no intelligence and no security system. The level of infrastructure destruction was unprecedented; almost everything had to be rebuilt from scratch. The war, which began in 1991, also left the country awash…

Integrating  Women Into African Militaries Must Go Beyond Quotas and Traditional Roles ADF STAFF photos by REUTERS At one time, some of the fiercest and most capable Soldiers in Africa were women: the Amazon warriors of the Dahomey Kingdom. The all-female fighting force, recruited from captives and the indigenous population, also served as royal bodyguards to the king. The force was formed in the 17th century, growing out of a contingent created to hunt elephants. By the mid-19th century, the number of fighters had grown to between 1,000 and 6,000 women, comprising about a third of the Dahomey Army. The…

AMISOM The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has given 4,500 durable footballs to the government of Somalia to promote peace and help teach life skills to children and youth groups throughout the country. The One World Futbol Project donated the footballs to AMISOM through the United Nations Support Office. Speaking at a ceremony in August 2014, Lydia Wanyoto Mutende, acting head of AMISOM, said sports is one of the key pillars of social transformation and development. Wanyoto said Somalia and the Somali Football Association will distribute the footballs to schools, youth groups and disadvantaged groups across the country to…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Music superstars Johnny Clegg and Youssou N’Dour paid homage June 15, 2014, to late South African icon Nelson Mandela at the 20th edition of the World Festival of Sacred Music in Morocco. The show in Fez, the spiritual capital of the North African nation, began with a reading of English poet William Ernest Henley’s Invictus, often recited by Mandela while imprisoned by the apartheid government. Thousands of people then broke into dance as South Africa’s Clegg, a musician internationally renowned as the “White Zulu” for mixing English and Zulu lyrics and rhythms, took to the stage. “Thank you…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE On Cape Town’s waterfront at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s biggest museum of contemporary art from across the continent is being carved from a conglomeration of concrete tubes nine stories high. The $50 million project to transform the grim functionality of 42 unused colonial grain silos into an ultramodern tribute to African creativity is driven by an international team of art experts and architects. For Mark Coetzee, executive director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, the project is the fulfilment of a pledge he made to himself a quarter century ago. “It has been…

The film Africa United was screened at the 2014 Rwanda Film Festival. It tells the story of three Rwandan children trying to get to the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup. THE EASTAFRICAN After the 1994 Rwandan genocide that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, some Rwandans began to tell their stories through film. The first man to do so was Eric Kabera who, in 2001, teamed up with British filmmaker Nick Hughes to make 100 Days. His film not only had a successful premiere in Kampala, Uganda, but it also went on to win the…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE The social media giant Facebook has unveiled an app to allow people who have mobile phones but no Internet access to get online services for health, education and basic communications. The Internet.org app was released first in Zambia and is to be rolled out in other countries where Internet access is lacking or unaffordable, the company said. “Over 85 percent of the world’s population lives in areas with existing cellular coverage, yet only about 30 percent of the total population accesses the Internet,” Facebook’s Guy Rosen said in a blog post. “Affordability and awareness are significant barriers to…