Africa

In June 2024, fighters from the Katiba Serma sub-group of Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) redoubled their efforts to cut off the town of Boni, in the Mopti region of central Mali.1 This is the latest iteration of a blockade that the jihadist group had intermittently imposed for more than nine months on the Route Nationale (RN) 16.2 Blockades are very much part of JNIM’s toolkit in its areas of influence not just in Mali, but also in neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Since 2023, Islamic State Sahel Province (IS Sahel), a violent extremist organization affiliated to the Islamic State, has shifted from perpetrating high levels of indiscriminate violence against civilians towards building community support in areas where it has consolidated its influence. It has also begun actively reviving local economies (including illicit activities) that had been heavily undermined by its earlier indiscriminate use of violence.

A Swahili proverb says, “If a snake bites your neighbor, you too are in danger.” The meaning is clear: A community is safest when everyone is protected. This is as true for a village as it is for a continent.
In the defense realm, this concept is known as “shared security,” and its importance is illustrated all too often. When a country descends into chaos, it becomes a haven for extremists to launch attacks outward. When criminals find ungoverned spaces, they exploit them and destabilize the region. When a civil war shatters peace, it sends refugees fleeing across borders.

The number of violent events involving extremist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has nearly doubled since 2021.

That is according to a Reuters review of data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data crisis monitoring group, which recorded 224 violent events a month on average since January, up from 128 in 2021.

Activists are condemning the juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger for failing to keep their promises. Some are calling for a return to civilian rule.

When military juntas took control in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, they alleged that civilian leaders were colluding with their former colonial power, France, to exploit natural resources. Following the coups, which took place between 2021 and 2023, civilians protested by displaying Russian flags and burning French ones.

Seven people died and six others were injured after a suicide bomber detonated an unidentified device at a café outside a police training school in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, police said Thursday.

Police say the victims included officers and civilians who were having tea outside the General Kaahiye Police Academy on Thursday.

Key points

• As debate grows over U.S. policy towards Africa, consideration should be given to altering the continent’s status under the Department of Defense’s Unified Command Plan (UCP).
• Eliminating Africa Command (AFRICOM) under the UCP would both signify a policy shift away from a counterterrorism focus and ease the process of implementing that change within the policymaking bureaucracy.
• Establishing a three-star subcommand, nested under European Command (EUCOM), would still allow the United States to use force in Africa, when necessary, but would reduce the prominence of military power in U.S. policy toward the continent.
• AFRICOM and EUCOM essentially share much of their force structure; this unique relationship would facilitate the transition to the proposed three-star subcommand.
• Altering the U.S. military footprint in Africa should also be considered in the context of any changes to policy and command arrangements. Making specific recommendations at this time is complicated by the opaqueness of the current footprint.

Nigeria’s ambition to build a value-added supply chain for critical minerals including lithium is getting a significant boost from an unlikely source: an e-marketplace startup.

Sabi, the Lagos-headquartered business-to-business e-commerce company focused on the informal economy, has been quietly building expertise as a middle man for miners seeking to export. In recent weeks, it inked separate deals with two companies — Italy’s Snowball Holdings, and Transition Resources from the US — that plan to set up lithium processing plants in the country over the coming year.

Addis Ababa October 15/2024( ENA) Africa must engage with the world on its own terms, ensuring that its interests are represented and respected on the global stage, said Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Temasgen Tiruneh.

The first African Defense Ministers Conference organized by Ethiopia on its own initiative kicked of in Addis Ababa at the Adwa Victory Memorial Museum this morning.

Eliminating or Exacerbating Violent Extremism?

For more than a decade, the Sahel has been subject to a protracted insurgency carried out by affiliates of the global terror networks of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. As the first country affected by this insurgency, Mali has responded by drastically modifying its response to violent extremism. The regional spillover of violent extremism has elicited similar counterterrorism responses from Bamako’s neighbors, with Niger most recently adopting a counterinsurgency model shaped by Mali’s and Burkina Faso’s policies. Although not in the Sahel, Mozambique has faced similar struggles in containing violent extremism and, like Mali and Niger, has implemented multiple counterterrorism programs to curtail the expansion and public support of jihadist groups. Conventional responses to violent extremism—such as the deployment of national military forces and the enlistment of international counterterrorism support—have not been successful and instead have resulted in each state adopting more localized approaches to eliminating the jihadist threat. This increasingly localized approach is often conducted through the deployment of civilian counterterrorism militias—also known as community-led self-defense groups, local militias, local forces, or simply civilian militias. Sometimes sponsored by the state, these local militias are intended to operate independently of national defense forces. However, tangential state status has not only afforded these groups funding and equipment, but it has also justified illicit behavior and discriminatory practices that have added additional threats to national counterterrorism agendas.