ADF

ADF STAFF One of Africa’s most acclaimed entrepreneurs, the founder of a shoe brand now selling in more than 55 countries globally, has announced the founding of a second company. In 2004, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu started soleRebels in Ethiopia with an investment of $10,000 from her family. The company makes and sells footwear using traditional Ethiopian techniques and modern designs. Most of the shoes are redesigns and modern interpretations of a traditional recycled-tire-sole shoe long worn by Ethiopians. As of 2014, the company had 100 employees and more than $1 million in revenues. She expects sales to reach $20 million…

(Ludwick Marishane) VOICE OF AMERICA Unemployment remains stubbornly high in South Africa and is one of the greatest socio-economic problems facing the country’s youth. Job creation was a leading goal of government policy during the first decade of democracy in South Africa after the end of apartheid in 1994. However, little success has been achieved in the struggle to create sufficient jobs. South Africa’s unemployment rate stands at 25.2 percent, creeping up by 1.1 percent from 2013. As of the middle of 2014, more than 5 million people were without work. The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE African governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed on the urgent need to harness the continent’s rapid economic growth, as unrest and a plethora of challenges temper exuberance about the continent’s rise. At a May 30, 2014, meeting in the Mozambique capital of Maputo, the IMF, finance ministers and central bank governors said a deeper “structural transformation” was needed so that ordinary citizens can benefit from the boom. Although Sub-Saharan Africa is among the world’s fastest-growing regions, pervasive poverty and recent serious unrest in Nigeria, South Sudan, the Sahel region and possible recession in South Africa…

CLUES Rome conquered this ancient Punic trading post and converted it into a base for the conquest of the kingdoms of Mauritania. The site comprises Byzantine, paleo-Christian, Phoenician and Roman ruins alongside other indigenous monuments. This coastal city has one of the oldest and most extensive burial grounds of the Punic world — sixth to second century B.C. Vandals invaded in the 430s, and the Byzantines reconquered the city in 534. It fell into decline in the sixth century and never recovered. ANSWER: Tipasa archaeological site, 70 kilometers west of Algiers, Algeria

Léopold Sédar Senghor was an intellectual, a writer, a scholar, a statesman and the first president of Senegal. He wrote Senegal’s national anthem and said he considered himself first and foremost a poet. But his writings indicate that he was, above all other things, an African. Senghor was born in 1906 in the town of Joal in coastal Senegal. He moved to a boarding school when he was 8 and quickly established himself as a dedicated student and scholar. After secondary school, he won a partial scholarship to study in France. His trip to France began, as he put it,…

U.S. Africa Command Staff Security begins with cooperation. Whether it is efforts in West Africa to stem the influx of illegal drugs from South America or bringing security to the continent’s ever-growing presence in cyperspace, countries will have to combine their efforts to win and preserve peace. An example of this occurred recently in Niger, where nations from the Sahel region gathered in Niamey, Agadez, Tahoua and Diffa in February and March 2014 for Exercise Flintlock 14. Participants were taught methods for addressing the growing threat of terrorist and violent extremist organizations, such as those that have taken root in…

The AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture Must Overcome Challenges to Fulfill Its Mission By Tim Murithi/Institute For Justice And Reconciliation Tim Murithi, Ph.D., is the head of the Justice and Reconciliation in Africa Programme for the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa, and a research fellow with the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town. He is the author of several articles and books on the African Union. The use of collective African resources to solve security concerns on the continent has long been a dream of African leaders. Among its strongest proponents was Ghana’s…

CLUES Founded at the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C., this city started out as a Phoenician port. The city had existed for more than 600 years when one of its sons, Septimius Severus, became Roman emperor in 193 A.D. The Romans quartered a garrison here during the war against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, a kingdom which included modern Algeria and Tunisia. Rome integrated this port city into the province of Africa in 46 B.C. The ancient port, with its artificial basin, still exists with jetties, fortifications, storage areas and temples. ANSWER: The ruins of Leptis Magna, 130 kilometers east…

The sectarian violence in the Central African Republic has uprooted nearly 1 million people, and it is estimated that 2.2 million, about half the population, need humanitarian aid. Drug supplies to clinics and hospitals have been disrupted, and public infrastructure such as schools and government buildings has been destroyed. Now, a major food crisis is looming. While fulfilling immediate humanitarian needs is essential, the international community needs to help address the development gaps that led to the crisis in the first place. If it fails to do so, another crisis could soon happen again. As such, humanitarian action needs to…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Makoko, Nigeria, known as the “slum on stilts” and the “Venice of Africa,” hopes a new floating school will create a better future for children there. The school, built entirely by locals and launched in 2013, has a triangular frame that rises from the water like a half-built house submerged in a flood. The project, backed by the United Nations Development Programme, the Nigerian government and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, is the brainchild of local architect Kunlé Adeyemi. His design was inspired by life in Makoko, and he said that improving the neglected area required a new approach…