ADF

Under Pressure, Boko Haram Is Changing Its Tactics ADF STAFF In a neighborhood of mud-brick buildings in Diffa, Niger, young men say there is one opportunity for work that is always lurking in the shadows. The job offers come from recruiters for the terror group Boko Haram, who approach teens with offers of cash and a way out. In a 2014 interview with the BBC, recruits in Niger said they are paid as much as 500,000 Nigerian Naira (about $3,000) to join the group. If they are willing to follow the recruiter back to Nigeria, they are sometimes given Tramol,…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wilson Kipsang won the London Marathon for the second time on April 13, 2014, producing a course record. He managed to hold off a strong field despite arriving late in the British capital after his passport was stolen. The 32-year-old Kenyan completed the 42.2-kilometer route in two hours, four minutes, 29 seconds — 11 seconds inside the previous fastest run in London by Kenyan Emmanuel Mutai in 2011. “I was really feeling good, and I controlled the guys,” said Kipsang, who also won in 2012. Kenyan compatriot Stanley Biwott was 26 seconds adrift in second, and deposed…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Headlines portray the Sahara as a barren desert that claims the lives of many migrants. But Nigerian poet Tade Ipadeola had a different story to tell — and it was worth $100,000. Ipadeola’s The Sahara Testaments won the most lucrative writing award in Africa, the Nigeria Prize for Literature, for his account of the history and culture of the world’s largest desert. He said the Sahara’s true richness has been distorted and overlooked. “I wanted to show that it is not just a barren wasteland,” the 43-year-old poet said. “The Sahara was the prime location for some of…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Until 2013, the only tourist attraction in the Benin town of Ouidah was a massive monument to the area’s bleak history as a slave trading hub. Now the town is the home to something entirely different — the first Sub-Saharan Africa museum dedicated to contemporary African art. The Zinsou museum, in an ornate 92-year-old villa, has attracted 13,000 visitors since its launch in November 2013 — an impressive tally for an out-of-the-way town in the sparsely visited nation of Benin. The reputation — and monetary value — of contemporary African art has steadily risen in recent years. Curators…

Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States Ade Adefuye speaks to U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria in 2013. [AFP/GETTY IMAGES] ADF STAFF Nigeria and the United States have pledged to become more involved as economic partners in the coming years, officials said at a March 2014 meeting in Washington. The goal is to raise the level of American foreign development investment in Nigeria to $8 billion annually, up from $5.4 billion in 2012, the Vanguard of Nigeria reported. Ade Adefuye, the Nigerian ambassador to the United States, said the two countries also…

REUTERS The idea of Japanese consumers eating sushi exported from a tiny African country with no coastline may sound improbable, but the kingdom of Lesotho is pulling it off. Hatched in the boardroom of South African bullion producer Gold Fields, a project called Highlands Trout is now exporting 2,000 metric tons of rainbow trout a year, mainly to Japanese supermarket chain CGC. “Made-in-Africa sushi” is a new twist in the African/Asian trade story, offering hope that a poor, landlocked country can tap its natural resources to produce and export a high-value product to discerning consumers. It also highlights the limits…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A revamp of Liberia’s four seaports is pointing the way to an economic transformation that aims to put the ravages of this West African nation’s civil wars behind it. A decade after the end of the hostilities, mineral-rich Liberia is seeing an expansion of its industrial and manufacturing sectors on the back of economic growth that hit 8.9 percent in 2012. The transformation began in 2009, when the government took on Matilda Parker, a U.S.-educated private-sector management specialist, to become what remains the world’s only female port authority head. Her task was to turn around the fortunes of…

REUTERS IBM is rolling out its Watson supercomputer system across Africa, saying it will help address continental development obstacles as diverse as medical diagnoses, economic data collection and e-commerce research. The world’s biggest technology service provider, IBM said “Project Lucy” will take 10 years and cost $100 million. The undertaking was named after the earliest known human ancestor fossil, which was found in East Africa. “I believe it will spur a whole era of innovation for entrepreneurs here,” IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty told delegates at a conference in February 2014. As an example, Rometty described how Morocco has…

SABAHIONLINE.COM Kenyan police arrested two men in March 2014 who were illegally driving a vehicle in Mombasa that was later discovered to be packed with explosives. “We have not established where the target was, but we have detained two terror suspects who were in the vehicle,” said Henry Ondiek of the Mombasa Criminal Investigation Department, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Police said two homemade bombs were found in the vehicle, along with a mobile phone that could have been used as a detonator. “We were tipped off that the two were headed for an attack on an unspecified place, and…

VOICE OF AMERICA The countries around Lake Chad in Central Africa say they are expanding a joint task force to combat arms trafficking, terrorism and cross-border attacks as regional tensions escalate. The conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the insurgency in northern Nigeria are having a regional impact, pushing refugees, weapons and violence into neighboring countries. In response, defense and military chiefs from the six-member Lake Chad Basin Commission met in Cameroon and approved a multinational military task force to act against militant threats. Cameroon Defense Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o said the meeting was a sort of…