AU force in Somalia completes first phase of drawdown

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 01 July 2023

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MOGADISHU - The African Union force in conflict-torn Somalia said it has completed the first phase of a troop reduction aimed at eventually putting security fully in the hands of the national army and police.

The African Transitional Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) said in a statement dated Friday that a total of seven bases had been handed over to Somali security forces, enabling the drawdown of 2,000 troops by the June 30 deadline.

ATMIS chief logistics officer Bosco Sibondavyi described the handover as an "important milestone" in the implementation of the Somalia Transition Plan and UN Security Council resolutions on the transfer of security responsibility.

The Security Council on Tuesday renewed for six months its authorisation of the AU force, which has a deadline of the end of September for the departure of a further 3,000 soldiers.

The ATMIS contingent had included over 19,000 soldiers and police officers from several African nations including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, but will have to be reduced to zero by the end of 2024.

In April 2022, the Council approved the replacement of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), which had been set up in 2007, by ATMIS, a mission with a reinforced mandate to fight Al-Shabaab Islamists.

The group, which has links with Al-Qaeda, has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile internationally backed government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.

Its fighters continue to carry out deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the AU force and US air strikes.

In the deadliest most recent attack, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in late May when Al-Shabaab militants stormed an AU base southwest of the capital.

How can we get electricity from space?

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 18 June 2023

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LONDON - Solar power harvested by satellites and beamed to Earth is no longer ‘just science fiction’, say scientists.

The United Kingdom (UK) government has given the go-ahead for a £4.3 million project to harness the Sun’s rays via a “Bond-style” floating solar power station that could supply up to a quarter of the country’s electricity, writes Arion McNicoll in the London-Based publication The Week.

Grant Shapps this week announced a multimillion-pound package of support for a project being led by two universities. Cambridge University will develop ultra-lightweight solar panels that can survive the harsh environment of space, while Queen Mary, University of London will research the wireless transmission technology that would send the energy back to Earth.

The energy company EDF, meanwhile, will investigate how to get the power into the UK’s National Grid.

“It does sound like something out of a Bond movie,” Shapps, the energy security and net zero secretary, said in an interview with The Telegraph. “But solar panels in space have the advantage of getting 24 hours of sunlight, which we can’t do on Earth, so it’s definitely worth investing in.

“People thought it was impossible to land a man on the Moon, or impossible to split that atom. You follow the science and the impossible becomes possible.”

‘A near-limitless supply of power’

Earlier this week a prototype built by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) demonstrated that beaming power wirelessly from space towards Earth is possible.

A small but detectable amount of power was transmitted by a device known as the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (Maple), which Space.com explained is “an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters”.

According to the space news website, the experiment proved “the viability of tapping into a near-limitless supply of power in the form of energy from the sun from space”.

Retrieving energy from space has numerous advantages, the site said. “Because solar energy in space isn’t subject to factors like day and night, obscuration by clouds, or weather on Earth, it is always available.” Consequently, “it is estimated that space-based harvesters could potentially yield eight times more power than solar panels at any location on the surface of the globe.”

‘Space solar power is inevitable’

Tapping into such a potentially vast and reliable power supply could not only boost Britain’s energy security, but will also reduce the need for fossil fuels and drive down household bills, Shapps said.

It is not just the UK that is interested in the technology. In late November, a top-level meeting of European science ministers will convene in Paris to discuss the next priorities for the European Space Agency (Esa). One item they will be considering is a project called Solaris, which proposes building commercial power stations in orbit.

The China Academy of Space Technology has announced plans for a similar system by 2028 and military labs in the US are reportedly experimenting with technology that could send power to remote bases or combat zones.

Generating power in space is not a new idea, said The Guardian. In fact it has been investigated every few decades since the beginning of the space race and “on every occasion, the story has been the same: the cost of launching such large satellites is prohibitive. But now, things are different.”

Reusable rockets are making the cost of sending equipment into orbit significantly cheaper, the newspaper said, citing John Mankins, a former Nasa physicist who is now president of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions.

Instead of costing about $1,000 to launch every kilogram into space, Mankins told The Guardian he expects prices soon to reach closer to $300 a kilogram. “That’s the holy grail for space solar power. It is not just possible someday – it’s inevitable in the next five or seven years,” he said.

“People are realising this isn’t just science fiction,” Ali Hajimiri, an electrical engineer at Caltech and one of the Maple project’s leaders, told The Wall Street Journal. “There may be a pathway to make this reality.”

‘An existential need’

Obstacles remain. One Solaris-funded report by the research firm Roland Berger noted that bringing space-based solar power to Earth will require not just a lot of satellites but plenty of antenna farms on the ground. Two gigawatts of beamed power would require about 25 square miles of receiver, the firm suggested.

Other potential dangers include everything from “impacts on health to sabotage”, the WSJ said. “And then there is the question of how much customers will have to pay for their space-based solar electricity.”

In its report, Roland Berger concluded that power from space could be “a cost-competitive renewable technology”, but that it still depends on how much it costs to send equipment into space and the cost of electronics generally.

Still, for Sergio Pellegrino, who also worked on Caltech’s project, the opportunities are clear. “There is an existential need for abundant clean power,” he said, “and this could help get us there.”

Over 38 children dead, others abducted in attack on Uganda school

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 17 June 2023

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KAMPALA - At least 38 pupils and three adults have been killed in an attack on a school in Uganda by a rebel group linked to Isis, according to local authorities.

The attack took place at Lhubiriha school in the Kasese district in western Uganda, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), police say.

The attackers burnt down a dormitory and looted food from the school’s stores, national police spokesperson Fred Enanga said.

Some of the children were burnt or hacked to death while many other pupils, mostly girls have been abducted by the group, Major General Dick Olum from the Ugandan army told the media.

The attack took place on Friday night and the death toll was initially put at 25. Officials said later on Saturday that 41 bodies had been recovered, including 38 schoolchildren, one guard and two members of the local community who were shot outside the school.

Authorities were still trying to extinguish the fire by Saturday morning local time, officials said, and they feared more dead bodies would be recovered.

Bodies were taken to Bwera Hospital, officials say. Eight people still remain in critical condition.

They have identified the attackers as being from a militant group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which has sworn allegiance to Isis.

The military was in “hot pursuit” of the attackers to rescue the abducted pupils, a spokesperson said. Officials believe the ADF attackers were headed towards the Virunga National Park, the major said.

The ADF has been responsible for several attacks in Congo in recent years including killing 30 soldiers and three civillians in 2021.

The group has been active since the 2000s and largely consists of local rebel fighters from DRC claiming responsibility for attacks using an Isis flag. It was first publicly recognised by Isis as an affiliate in late 2018 after an attack on the armed forces of the DRC, according to the US state department.

According to the United Nations, there are more than 100 armed groups operating in the DRC.