Africa

In both spirit and language, the newly launched Biden administration’s Africa strategy illustrates the shift in the diplomatic mood in the four years since National Security Advisor John Bolton announced the Trump administration’s Africa policy. Consistent with the temper of the time, Trump’s Africa strategy emphasized three principles: prosperity, security, and stability. If there was one overriding military objective to be achieved, it was “countering the threat from radical Islamic terrorism and violent conflict.”

The al-Shabab extremist group has exploited Ethiopia’s internal turmoil to cross the border from neighboring Somalia in unprecedented attacks in recent weeks that a top U.S. military commander has warned could continue.

After years of failed military efforts, the path forward has to include some kind of accommodation with the militants.

Since at least 2017, when Mali’s government organised a peace forum called the Conference of National Understanding, prominent voices in the country and the wider Sahel region have explored the possibility of dialogue with jihadists.

Three Anti-Stock Theft Unit officers were injured on Monday after suspected Al-Shabaab militants attacked Mandera’s Elram base.

Elram is about 10kms to the Somalia border.

Algeria is interested in joining the BRICS, the economic bloc of developing countries which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The appeal was publicly made by the northern African leader, Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a TV interview broadcast on Sunday, July 31.

The United States has ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Mali due to a heightened risk of attacks, the State Department said.

The US did not mention a specific threat to its employees, but said there was an increased danger of violence affecting Westerners in a country that has been plagued by jihadist attacks for years.

Adapting Sahelian force structures to lighter, more mobile, and integrated units will better support the population-centric COIN practices needed to reverse the escalating trajectory of violent extremist attacks.

In a different context, the deadly attack on the 7 Guards Battalion of the Nigerian Army Presidential Guards Brigade on the evening of Friday, July 22nd would have set alarm bells ringing in the upper echelons of Nigerian intelligence. Among the many puzzles raised by the attack, which reportedly left three soldiers wounded and eight dead, is the question of how the assailants got wind of the elite unit’s coordinates. Are there insiders within the Nigerian armed forces feeding intelligence to the gunmen and bandits who have laid siege on the Nigerian state as some politicians and military experts have suggested?