ADF

Burkina Faso media overflows these days with the amazing achievements of junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré: the country has repaid its foreign debt, built new low-cost housing, and he discovered a new source of oil. The reality is quite different. Burkina Faso’s foreign debt still exists and sits at $5.6 billion or 21.5% of the country’s gross domestic product. Online videos showing low-cost housing under construction are actually from Algeria. And the “oil” coming out of the ground is actually footage of a broken sewer pipe in the state of Minnesota in the United States. In short, the day-to-day reality…

Acting Defense Minister of Zambia Brenda Tambatamba led a procession of Soldiers to stand before an array of aircraft on the sun-soaked tarmac of Lusaka Air Base for the opening ceremony of Exercise Blue Lugwasho. Replete with a brass band and a fighter jet flyover, the pageantry was a fitting way to mark the return of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) “Blue” exercises after a COVID-19 pandemic-induced hiatus since 2019. Nearly 1,000 Air Force troops from across the regional bloc took part in Blue Lugwasho, a humanitarian and disaster response exercise, from September 8 to 26. Angola, Botswana, Lesotho,…

As terrorism-related violence in the Sahel increasingly moves toward coastal West Africa, an economic bloc of West African countries announced plans to activate a 260,000-strong counterterrorism force with an annual $2.5 billion budget. Omar Touray, president of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Commission, announced on August 25 that the rapid deployment force will provide logistics to frontline states. “This bold initiative has become necessary given the asymmetric security dynamics in our region,” Touray said in a report by Nigerian online newspaper The Cable. “We are conscious of the fact that this requires the necessary financial resources and…

A collection of East African government officials, community leaders, and marine experts and conservationists have committed to strengthen the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which costs the region an estimated $415 million annually. The agreement, which seeks to improve regional collaboration against illegal fishing, was reached during a roundtable discussion organized by The Jahazi Project in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The project, named after the traditional Swahili dhow, is a marine conservation initiative run by Ascending Africa, headquartered in Dar-es-Salaam. Michael Mallya, spokesperson for The Jahazi Project, noted that Tanzania alone loses an estimated $142.8 million annually to illegal fishing, while…

The Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin terror group has increased attacks on Malian urban centers, cities and military outposts in its efforts to further destabilize the country and impose a strict form of Islamic law. Civilians frequently are caught in the crosshairs of the group’s terror campaign, which threatens the entire Sahel region. In late August, the terror group, also known as JNIM, gained control of a military base in the town of Farabougou, near the Wagadou Forest in the south-central Ségou region. The forest on the Mauritanian border is a known JNIM base. About a week later, JNIM captured Farabougou. An…

Across the Sahel, the buzz of a motorcycle engine has become a sound that inspires fear. Motorcycles have become the vehicle of choice for terrorists across the region, allowing them to move quickly, strike suddenly, and avoid capture by the local authorities. “Motorbikes have been a near-constant presence in Sahelian armed groups’ battlefield operations, with swarms of motorbikes allowing tens, or even hundreds of fighters to rapidly descend on a target location,” researchers with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) wrote in a 2023 report on motorbike use among Sahel terror groups. The appeal of motorbikes is simple,…

Intensifying attacks by Islamic State-linked terrorists in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province have forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes in recent weeks. They also have contributed to a longer deployment for Rwandan troops. Mozambique’s National Defense Minister Cristóvão Artur Chume and his Rwandan counterpart, Juvenal Marizamunda, signed a Status of Force Agreement in Kigali on August 27 to keep the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) engaged in the fight against the affiliate group known as Islamic State-Mozambique (ISM). “Our common threat in the region remains terrorism,” Cristóvão said during a prior August meeting between the parties to strengthen…

More than seven months after a toxic waste spill at a Chinese-owned mine caused one of the worst environmental disasters in its history, Zambia still is trying to determine the full extent of the damage and the response needed. Attempts to downplay the catastrophe by Sino-Metals Leach copper mine, which is owned by the state-run China Nonferrous Metals Industry Group, have sparked outrage and, more recently, a forceful government response. Fifty million liters of toxic mining waste poured into the Mwambashi River, just outside of the mining town of Chambishi on February 18 when a substandard earthen wall of Sino-Metal’s…

The arrest in August of 60 Chinese nationals conducting illegal cryptocurrency mining in Angola shut down 25 mining operations and was part of a larger multinational investigation into cybercrime across Africa. Operation Serengeti 2.0 ran from June through August under the jurisdiction of the African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AJOC). Working with Interpol, police in 18 African countries arrested 1,209 alleged cybercriminals, shut down more than 11,000 scam operations and recovered more than $97 million in stolen funds. The project targeted what investigators described as “high-harm and high-impact cybercrimes” that included ransomware, online scams and business email compromise operations. All…

Another armed group has emerged to further destabilize the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Led by convicted war criminal Thomas Lubanga, the Convention for the Popular Revolution (CPR) reportedly engaged the Congolese military (FARDC) in heavy fighting in August at two locations about 30 kilometers north of Ituri province’s capital, Bunia. Dieudonne Losa, a civil society activist in Bunia, said 19 civilians died, including 13 elderly women and four young girls. “What is happening north of Bunia is an unacceptable situation,” Losa told Reuters. FARDC said the CPR had attempted multiple attacks and that Soldiers killed…