ADF

A United Nations expert panel has released a report showing that Yemen’s Houthi rebels and al-Shabaab terrorists have exchanged intelligence, trafficked weapons and cooperated on military operations. The October 17, 2025, Security Council report from the Panel of Experts on Yemen notes that cooperation between Yemen-based Houthi rebels and Somalia’s al-Shabaab has intensified. “The cooperation with Al-Shabaab is not simply for transactional benefits; it is also part of a Houthi strategy to wield increasing influence in the region,” the report states. The Houthis emerged in the 1990s under the name Ansar Allah, which means “Partisans of God.” They represent the…

When Russian Wagner Group mercenaries arrived in Mali in 2021 at the invitation of the ruling junta, the private military contractors were traveling light. Wagner’s purported mission was to train the Malian Army (FAMa) to fight al-Qaida-backed terrorists with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Tuareg separatists now operating under the banner of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA). However, mercenaries quickly joined the fighting, despite having arrived lightly armed. The solution, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), was to loot weapons from the battlefield or acquire them from FAMa itself in violation…

Russia’s pledges of economic investment in the African continent are falling well short of expectations, according to the latest data analysis. Vladimir Putin grabbed headlines at the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, signing 92 economic agreements and declaring that trade with Africa would double within five years. But Russia fell well short of his target. In 2024, trade between African countries and Russia totaled $24.5 billion, which paled in comparison to Africa’s $355 billion in trade with its leading partner, the European Union. Of Russia’s total trade with Africa, Russian exports accounted for a lopsided $21.2 billion. Most of that…

Morocco broke ground on a new maintenance hangar at Benslimane Airport to service the Royal Moroccan Air Force’s (RMAF) growing fleet of fighter jets and transport planes. The project, scheduled to be operational in 2026, is part of Morocco’s increasing investment in the aviation sector. The facility is a joint project between  MEDZ, Morocco an infrastructure development subsidiary of the national investment fund; the U.S. aerospace company Lockheed Martin; and Maintenance Aero Maroc, a subsidiary of the Belgian maintenance, repair and operations company Sabena Engineering. Once complete, the 8,000-square-meter center will be a regional hub for servicing the RMAF’s F-16…

Ghana has acknowledged that its fight against illegal gold mining, known as galamsey, is a matter of national security. Now experts are saying that links between galamsey, terrorism, transnational criminal networks and other illicit economies are a problem for most of West Africa. It is well known that proceeds from galamsey have ended up in the hands of terrorist organizations. Liam Morrisey, a mining and security risk consultant, believes that Ghana is in danger of infiltration by these militants operating in and around the country’s northern borderlands. “The threat that Galamsey poses is despicable, and Ghana needs to treat it…

After 18 months of laying siege to el-Fasher, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally defeated Sudanese government troops there, taking control of the Army’s last enclave in Darfur and causing death, famine and displacement. El-Fasher, once home to more than a million people, fell to the RSF on October 26, 2025. The International Organization for Migration estimated that more than 70,000 people have left the city since the RSF takeover. Yet a displacement camp in Tawila about 70 kilometers west of el-Fasher has seen far fewer arrivals than expected, according to Al Jazeera. Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab examined…

Gas stations in the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), Bangui, are a good indicator of a country in the grips of a fuel crisis. They frequently are empty or surrounded by long lines of vehicles and motorcycles waiting for a working pump. Diodone Mangaï, a civil servant, arrived at a station one day at 8 a.m. to fill his tank but left empty-handed. “They tell us it’s all gone, that we have to wait even longer,” he told Corbeau News Centrafrique. “I can’t go to work, and tonight I don’t know how I’m going to pick up my…

Woodcarvers in China’s eastern city of Dongyang produce billions of dollars in expensive furniture every year, much of it made from rosewood. While wealthy people enjoy the highly prized chairs and tables, African communities pay the price in the form of environmental destruction. Across the continent, China’s drive for natural resources — from cobalt and gold to rubber and rosewood — has displaced communities, deforested the landscape and devastated livelihoods. “Chinese infrastructure and mining projects have opened previously undisturbed forest and conservation areas, fragmented habitats and weakened the ecological integrity of critical landscapes,” researchers led by Ebagnerin Jérôme Tondoh, an…

China is promoting its DeepSeek-R1 AI chatbot to African users, with some experts saying the system is a threat to users’ data privacy and yet another technological innovation that lies outside of national control for African countries. China’s Huawei Technologies Co., which has connections in many African countries, has partnered with Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer to offer the open-source version of DeepSeekAI as a cheaper alternative to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT that are based in European and North American countries. For African companies using DeepSeek as the foundation for their own AI chatbots, DeepSeek charges significantly less to process…

There have been 11 successful coups on the continent since August 2020, when Malian military officers arrested President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita at gunpoint and forced him to resign. The most recent coup was on October 12, when Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina was ousted after weeks of protests led by young people upset by power and water failures, grinding poverty, a lack of opportunities and alleged government corruption. Rajoelina’s office issued a statement calling the coup “a serious breach of the rule of law.” Col. Michael Randrianirina, who led the coup, was sworn in as Madagascar’s president on October 17. In response,…