ADF

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…

ADF STAFF Violent extremism from the Sahel has been spreading closer to Ghana’s northern border over the last five years. Mataru Mumuni Muqthar, executive director of the West Africa Centre for Counter-Extremism (WACCE) in Accra, said that while there have been no attacks, the area is “much more exposed than before.” “How soon do we expect attacks locally? We’re not sure, but [the threat] is increasing due to marginalization along ethnic lines, especially the Fulani ethnic group,” Muqthar told ADF. “There are other ethnic groups, but it’s more pervasive with the Fulani, more intense.” Muqthar also said there has also been evidence…

ADF STAFF As both sides of Sudan’s civil war fight to control el-Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur, the city’s hospitals and patients are in the crossfire. El-Fasher’s last functioning public hospital, Saudi Hospital, was struck by a bomb on Aug. 11 that wrecked its surgical unit and damaged its maternity ward. Five patients and one staff member died in the attack. “(The) attack on Saudi Hospital – which is the largest hospital in North Darfur state – makes it crystal clear that the warring parties are making no efforts to protect health facilities or the civilians inside them,”…

ADF STAFF Mozambique has eclipsed other African countries as China’s primary supplier of rosewood, a material coveted for its use in expensive furniture. Mozambique shipped 20,000 metric tons of the internationally protected timber to China in 2023 alone, despite a long-standing ban on exporting logs. In doing so, Mozambique overtook Madagascar, Nigeria and Senegal as China’s major rosewood source. Those other countries have either seen their native rosewood supplies stripped or depleted by Chinese logging companies or they have begun enforcing existing rosewood bans more strictly, according to experts. Much of Mozambique’s loggers, both legal and illicit, harvest in Cabo…

ADF STAFF Security threats have grown steadily since Niger’s military seized control of the government in July 2023. While multiple terrorist groups have increased their attacks in the west, rebels and bandits in the east now threaten the country’s fragile economy. Attacks on a critical pipeline have prompted the withdrawal of a Chinese state-owned oil company from its base of operations in an oilfield more than 1,700 kilometers from the capital Niamey, in the eastern desert region of Diffa. The China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) said that “the security situation at the site has deteriorated” after “terrorist groups” carried out…