ADF

Russia’s Africa Corps is shifting fighters out of Mali’s northern regions to protect the capital and the ruling junta while providing air support and intelligence to Malian soldiers in the field. “By and large they are taking more of a backseat role,” Benedict Manzin, lead Middle East and Africa analyst for U.K.-based intelligence firm Sybiline, told ADF. “They’re doing everything they can to avoid having to feed more bodies into the meat grinder,” he added. “They’re trying to minimize personnel exposure and maximize the damage they can do.” Africa Corps replaced notorious Wagner Group mercenaries in mid-2024. The switch came…

Artificial intelligence plays an increasing role in the way security services respond to disasters and humanitarian crises like floods and disease outbreaks. However, this technology relies on human expertise to analyze and develop strategies based on the data those systems produce. That was the assessment of a group of experts in both artificial intelligence and disaster management assembled recently by the Stimson Center think tank. “In a lot of cases, AI models present a very definitive answer, but there still is inherent uncertainty,” Aaron Opdyke, a disaster risk specialist with the World Bank, said during a panel discussion. “We still…

Since Sudan’s civil war began in 2023, there has been widespread fear that prolonged fighting could spill across its borders and spark broader conflict in the Horn of Africa. In early May, a barrage of drone strikes hit Khartoum’s airport and upended what had been a burgeoning sense of normalcy in the Sudanese capital. The drones targeted civilian terminals and struck a radar and an air defense system just one week after 300 citizens returned on the first international flight since the war began. “The episode marks a dangerous escalation in what has become one of the world’s most tangled…

Guineans received surprising news in late March, when the government announced that it had dismantled a suspected terrorist network linked to the al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). A nationwide counterterrorism operation in 2025 yielded the arrests of 11 people, including a Malian man named Fotigui Daou, who admitted his involvement in a longstanding hostage-for-ransom operation that helped finance JNIM operations. “Judicial investigations have revealed that a group of 11 individuals, including seven Malians, two Nigeriens, one Burkinabe and one Guinean, were arrested in April 2025 in the prefectures of Siguiri, Mandiana, and Kankan,” Prosecutor General Fallou Doumbouya said in…

Illegal Chinese miners in Mali have increasingly come under attack from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a powerful coalition of Sahelian terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaida. Adama Koné, a Sikasso-based radio analyst on politics and security, said the terror group is using the money it makes from kidnapping and extortion to finance its war against Mali’s ruling military junta. “The group does not seek to control the mines,” he told The Africa Report for a May 28 article. “It needs only to tax the informal mining sector and to control the chokepoints through which gold must pass.” Several deadly attacks and…

Three Mexican nationals were among nine people arrested by Nigerian authorities on May 20 at the largest industrial-scale methamphetamine laboratory ever discovered in the country. Officials found the lab on a remote farm in Ogun State’s Abidagba forest. According to Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, authorities seized chemicals worth $363 million, including crystal meth, and the operation included raids on two homes in an upscale neighborhood in Lagos. Agency Chair retired Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa said the operations exposed a “sophisticated, transnational methamphetamine production syndicate run jointly by a Nigerian drug cartel and their Mexican counterparts.” “This network did…

Members of the Libyan and Ivoirian armed forces say that the 2026 edition of Flintlock demonstrated how special forces operators from African nations can partner across borders to confront the continent’s growing terror threats. Officers from the two countries spoke at a panel discussion in Tampa, Florida, in late May, after the completion of the April 14-30 exercise. About 1,500 service members from more than 30 African and international partner nations participated in the exercise, hosted by Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. Libya hosted Flintlock for the first time. It also marked the first time Libya’s two rival military factions have…

A propaganda video showed a boatload of heavily armed Boko Haram fighters heading toward a Lake Chad island held by their rivals, soldiers from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The Boko Haram fighters noticed another boat nearby and chased it down, guns blazing. After a couple of minutes, the Boko Haram fighters celebrated as blood clouded the water. Videos produced by both terror groups suggest that the massive basin straddling the porous, largely ungoverned borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria has become a war zone, with civilians caught in the crosshairs. In their back-and-forth battle for control…

Strife is growing in eastern Chad’s ethnic Zaghawa communities amid allegations of support for Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Suspicions of Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby’s support for the paramilitary RSF can be traced to the beginning of Sudan’s civil war in 2023, and have gained currency with the revelation that Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo’s cousin, Gen. Bichara Issa Djadalla, is President Déby’s special advisor. While Chad denies direct involvement in Sudan’s war, analysts say weapons, particularly from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), continue to be trafficked to the RSF through Chad, despite the border of Sudan being…

A few weeks after Tuareg fighters pushed the Malian Army and its Russian supporters out of the northern city of Kidal, hundreds of metal balls the size of oranges rained down on the nearby community of Tadjmart. The Malian Army soon announced what Tadjmart residents quickly learned: The military has launched cluster bombs against communities in the northern region held by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA). The Tadjmart attack came after a similar attack a few days earlier in the community of Oubder in the Timbuktu region. “This is the first time we have seen these cluster bombs,” Tilla Ag…