Malawi

ADF STAFF When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Malawi, the country had just one lab and four staff members sampling SARS-CoV-2 viruses. “On a normal day, I was at work by 6 a.m. and tried to leave by 8 p.m.,” technologist Lucious Chabuka…

ADF STAFF Minutes after dropping her daughter off at school on August 23, 2021, Babita Deokaran returned to her home in south Johannesburg, where she was killed in a hail of bullets by paid assassins. The Gauteng health department chief…

ADF STAFF When the COVID-19 pandemic first closed schools throughout Malawi in March 2020, Patricia Siyati and her friends felt like they were on holiday. But the pandemic changed everything. Patricia’s school didn’t reopen for…

Tanzanian Cpl. Ali Khamis Omary was serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, trying to halt the spread of Ebola. He and his colleagues had been sent to a camp in the eastern part of the…

ADF STAFF Shortly after South Africa reopened its schools last year, a student at Isolemamba High School in KwaZulu-Natal province contracted COVID-19. Then five teachers also tested positive, prompting the school to close for two days.…

ADF STAFF With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on everyone’s mind, the question from a Cameroonian journalist caught no one by surprise: How important are Africa’s security partnerships with Europe and the United States, and how do they…

ADF STAFF Having taken “a brutal toll” on Africa, COVID-19 appears to be shifting out of the pandemic phase and health officials should be able to manage the disease long term, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s)…

ADF STAFF The use of a self-guided drone on the Libyan battlefield may have been a first in Africa. Now experts are voicing concern about their expanded use. In March 2020, as fighters loyal to Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar…

ADF STAFF Researchers in South Africa say the omicron variant known as BA.2 has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the country weeks after it was identified. The strain accounts for nearly 100% of new infections, prompting one…

ADF STAFF A new twist on the omicron coronavirus variant has some researchers concerned about the next development in the global pandemic. Known as subvariant BA.2, the new version of omicron is about 1.5 times more infectious than…