ADF

The French Navy on September 22 seized nearly 10 tons of cocaine worth $610 million from an unflagged fishing vessel in the Gulf of Guinea. About three weeks earlier, the French Navy nabbed nearly six tons of cocaine worth almost $375 million in the same area. These seizures highlight West Africa’s position as a transshipment node for cocaine shipments from Latin America. Since 2019, Western Balkan criminal groups have used West Africa as a key logistical, storage and redistribution hub for cocaine shipments bound for Europe and other areas. According to the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index, cocaine trafficking was the…

Somalia has unveiled a national strategy designed to counter improvised explosive devices, the deadliest weapon used by terror group al-Shabaab. The effort has been in the works since 2023 when experts conducted a baseline assessment of the country’s C-IED capabilities. The new strategy, announced at a September event in Mogadishu, provides a framework for adding more explosive ordnance disposal units to the Somali National Army (SNA) and improving interagency collaboration. “This is a historic milestone for our country. Never before have we had a unified, nationally owned framework to address the IED threat,” said Awes Hagi Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia’s national…

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have deployed a sophisticated new weapon in their fight against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF): the locally-produced Safrouq drone, which is packed with anti-jamming technology and has a range of 600 kilometers. The Safrouq is a response to the RSF’s employing Belarus’ Groza-S electronic warfare system to identify and jam or trick the SAF’s incoming drones. The Safrouq represents the latest technological advancement as both sides of the conflict shift their tactics to airborne weapons and away from ground forces, which have largely reached a stalemate. The Safrouq can be used for reconnaissance, but…

Kenyans called it the “railway to nowhere” years before the phrase took on a literal meaning. Today, the end of the line for the vaunted Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) sits unused in a cornfield in the Rift Valley, about 468 kilometers short of its goal of reaching the Ugandan border. The SGR was supposed to be an economic boon for East Africa, stretching from Mombasa and Nairobi all the way to Uganda with plans to link up with Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and South Sudan. “The reality of what remains the single-largest infrastructure program Kenya…

Through radio jingles, posters, daily text messages and door-to-door visits, Sierra Leone’s public health officials are driving a messaging campaign aimed at preventing the spread of mpox. Experts say the effort has contributed to a sharp drop in new cases since they spiked in May. The campaign and other public health measures helped bring new cases down from 600 per week in May to about 26 per week as of the end of September, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The country’s fatality rate also declined sharply. “The case fatality rate was the key challenge for…

A marked increase in attacks by armed groups and terrorists on military bases and civilians across the central Sahel have occurred since the beginning of 2025 when Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger left the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which offered counterterrorism support. The three junta-led countries formed a defense force through their Alliance of Sahel States, but terror attacks by the al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the Islamic State in the Sahel Province and their numerous splinter organizations have continued. The groups now also target border regions between Benin, Niger, Nigeria and Togo. “West Africa is becoming a…

A Boko Haram faction operating in the forested communities of north-central Nigeria’s Niger State is gaining notoriety for its barbaric tactics, attacks on infrastructure, cattle rustling and ability to mix with bandits. Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) — or “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad” — has long terrorized communities in and around the Niger State community of Shiroro, which is 128 kilometers northwest of Abuja, the national capital. In June 2024, the group killed 20 young men, beheading 10 of them, in an attack on a Shiroro village. Residents were forced to hold…

African nations are increasingly turning to space technology to address resilience and security issues such as communications, border control, wildlife protection, maritime monitoring and natural resource management. People looking to the stars for answers to terrestrial problems is not new on the continent. A nomadic group in Egypt built the Nabta Playa stone circle more than 7,000 years ago to mark the summer solstice and chart the arrival of the rainy season. Nabta Playa, which predates England’s Stonehenge, is the world’s oldest stone circle and possibly the planet’s first astronomical observatory. It now rests reassembled in Egypt’s Nubian Museum in…

Sudan’s devastating civil war intensified over the first half of 2025 as civilians continued to bear the brunt of the violence amid an out-of-control humanitarian crisis. Both the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, are accountable for a significant rise in civilian killings, according to a new report by the United Nations Human Rights Office. Between January 1 and June 30, 3,384 civilians died in the conflict, mostly in Darfur, followed by Kordofan and Khartoum. That number represents almost 80% of the…

In the northeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chinese mining companies are exploiting government corruption, driving local people from their land, and doing irreparable environmental damage in their pursuit of gold. Illegal gold mining in the Haut-Uélé province has surged since 2020. In many cases, operations that portray themselves as artisanal mining cooperatives are either backed by Chinese companies or directly operated by them, according to an investigation by Pax for Peace, a nongovernmental organization based in The Netherlands. “The cooperatives are just labels,” one unidentified official in the Watsa community told Pax. “The Chinese nationals are…