women

ADF Staff It was a life filled with firsts. Maj. Gen. Constance Edjeani-Afenu of the Ghanaian Armed Forces (GAF) was a trailblazer as a military officer, peacekeeper and diplomat.  She died in 2022, but her memoir, “Lady in Boots,”…

ADF STAFF Dozens of women and girls were lined up in a schoolyard in Port Sudan with AK-47 assault rifles at their feet. They loaded the weapons with ammunition as a military trainer barked orders, then laid flat on their stomachs…

U.N. PEACEKEEPING The Egyptian Formed Police Unit, deployed in Douentza, Mali, as part of the U.N. mission (MINUSMA) in 2017, set up three teams to tackle the threat of improvised explosive devices (IED). One of them was composed…

ADF STAFF Nvou Michael had 15 handmade rifles and 400 rounds of AK-47 ammunition when police intercepted her on an expressway in Kaduna State in 2022. Nigeria Police Force public relations officer Olumuyiwa Adejobi elicited Michael’s…

ADF STAFF A woman who lives in Moura, a town in central Mali’s restive Mopti region, recalled the horrors inflicted on her when Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner Group mercenaries launched a five-day assault in March 2022. After days…

ADF STAFF | photos by Getty Images About 100 marauders stormed the Cameroonian town of Mozogo at 1:30 a.m. on January 8, 2021. From the way they dressed and spoke, it was obvious that they were Boko Haram extremists. They broke into…

ADF STAFF Young people have been among the hardest hit by the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, suffering education and training disruptions, losing sources of income, and dealing with food insecurity. Of the estimated 1.4…

ADF STAFF Pregnant women who catch COVID-19 are in much greater danger than previously suspected, according to a new study that analyzed data collected from six African countries. The study found that pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2, the…

ADF STAFF Feeling pressure to make money, Dayo Sadiq decided to migrate from her home in Benin City, Nigeria, to Mali. She had been promised a job making up to $360 a month to clean houses. Like many other Nigerian women from Edo State,…

ADF STAFF Wildlife ranger work traditionally has been a men’s-only club in Southern Africa. So when the nonprofit International Anti-Poaching Foundation created the all-female Akashinga ranger team in Zimbabwe in 2017, it was greeted…