West Africa

ADF STAFF About 75% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with many of them hiding their positions at sea by turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS). The practice, known as “going dark,”…

ADF STAFF Liberia’s journey with United Nations peacekeeping forces has come full circle over the course of two decades. In need of support after 14 years of unrest and two civil wars, the West African country hosted a U.N. peacekeeping…

ADF STAFF That Senegal has never had a coup or a civil war is both a source of great pride among its people and a rarity in Africa. The coastal West African country, surrounded by what recently has become known as a “coup belt” of…

ADF STAFF Ghanaian leaders say a new era of military education and training has begun, as classes have commenced at the new war college amid plans to establish a full university system. President Nana Akufo-Addo laid out his vision for…

ADF STAFF The 2023 ENACT Organized Crime Index for Africa explicitly links armed conflict and a lack of democratic institutions to an increase in organized crime. The report, authored by the Global Initiative Against Transnational…

ADF STAFF West Africa has transitioned over the past decade from a transit route for illegal drugs headed to Europe from South America to a booming illegal drug market with a troubling rise in domestic users. That is among the…

ADF STAFF Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s three-country tour of Africa in mid-July marked the first time the controversial country’s president has visited the continent in more than 11 years. Raisi’s government has made a point of…

ADF STAFF John Momo is a 27-year-old seventh-grade dropout struggling with drug addiction in the notorious Zimbabwe ghetto in Paynesville, Liberia, where he has lived for nine years. Hundreds of young people — men and women, boys and…

ADF STAFF As part of the fight against drug trafficking, piracy, and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Gulf of Guinea, 19 West African countries joined for Grand African Navy Exercise for Maritime Operations (NEMO)…

ADF STAFF International observers showered Liberia with praise after the West African nation with a grim history of conflict conducted largely peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections on October 10. “Liberians were able to freely…