Flashback

ADF STAFF Great Zimbabwe is mostly deserted now, but in its time it was a wondrous place. Historians believe that members of what is now the Shona tribe began work on the city-state Great Zimbabwe in the ninth century, with its heyday…

ADF STAFF In 1861, 3,000 heavily armed female Soldiers charged a thorny wall during a skills demonstration. King Glele, their ruler in Dahomey, a region that is now part of Benin, was eager to show off the ferocity and skill of his…

ADF STAFF An Ashanti woman who shamed her tribe’s warriors into standing up for themselves more than 100 years ago has become a symbol of freedom for Ghana. Nana Yaa Asantewaa’s actions provoked the final Anglo-Ashanti war, known as the…

ADF STAFF Asli Hassan Abade made history as the first female air force pilot in Africa. She is a product of a unique time in her native Somalia’s history. After Somalia became an independent country in 1960, its military branches grew…

ADF STAFF For a time, skirmishes between rival Nguni tribes in what is now South Africa were all bluster and no battle. Opposing fighters would stand 35 to 45 meters apart, each armed with an assegai, a 1.8-meter spear, and a tall…

ADF STAFF It was just before midnight at the end of a long election day in 2000, and Lamine Cissé, Senegal’s minister of the interior, had the unenviable task of telling the president he had lost.  In a historic phone call, Cissé, a…