ADF

In a first, the African Land Forces Summit was held in Europe and included representatives from the defense industry. The annual summit, sponsored by U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa (SETAF-AF), took place March 23 and 24 in Rome and drew more than 300 participants from 47 countries. It was the 13th iteration of the event and the first to take place outside of Africa since 2022. Col. William Daniel, SETAF-AF’s director of security cooperation, said the goal of the event was to match ideas with “proven, scalable solutions” to Africa’s security challenges. Of the industry leaders there displaying…

Chadian President Mahamat Déby has ordered his military to retaliate against attacks originating in Sudan after a drone killed 17 people during a funeral in Al-Tina, a border town. Déby denounced the mid-March attack, calling it “outrageous and a blatant aggression” that violated Chad’s territorial integrity. It was not clear whether the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched the attack. The two sides have been embroiled in a civil war since April 2023, and Chad increasingly has been caught in the fray. Two Chadian troops were killed in a late December 2025 strike on an…

A new report documents the huge scale of illegal activity by Chinese “floating fish factories” that set up off the coast of Guinea-Bissau and harvest marine resources by the ton. The Hua Xin 17, listed as a 125-meter Chinese cargo ship in maritime databases, was anchored for 157 days in 2025 about 50 kilometers off the coast of Orango Island, part of Guinea-Bissau’s protected Bijagós archipelago. The Tian Yi He 6, also listed as a cargo vessel, spent 244 days about 60 kilometers from the island last year. An investigation by The Guardian and DeSmog, an investigative journalism organization, showed…

Somalia’s al-Shabaab terrorists and Yemen’s Houthi militants have long been known to cooperate across the Red Sea, capitalizing on entrenched networks that enable all kinds of illicit commerce back and forth from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. Now, however, evidence indicates that links forged more than a decade ago might be taking on a more tangible, and dangerous, character. “The cooperation is now advancing beyond fundamental logistical and intelligence coordination into political, media and direct military collaboration,” according to a 39-page February 2026 report by Somalia’s Mogadishu-based Saldhig Institute research organization. “We were aware that the relationship was very…

Coastal West African countries are strengthening counterterrorism partnerships after the 2025 rupture with Sahelian nations that crippled the G5 Sahel Joint Force and other regional security structures. Beninese and Nigerian military leaders recently met to discuss a joint operation along their shared border with Niger, which has become a hot spot for terrorism spilling over from Niger’s Dosso province. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), attacks by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) across the region grew 86% from about 150 in 2024 to about 280 in 2025. Civilian fatalities…

Nine months after Russia replaced and rebranded its mercenaries in Mali as Africa Corps, the mercenaries’ involvement in counterterrorism there has dropped off dramatically, leaving Malian soldiers to carry more of the burden. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), battles involving Russian fighters in Mali dropped from 537 to 402 between 2024 and 2025, a reduction of more than 33%. ACLED reported just 24 incidents per month since the beginning of 2026. Russia’s shrinking battlefield footprint coincided with the deployment of Africa Corps and its more hands-off approach compared to Wagner’s frequent use of brutal…

A disagreement between Kenya and Somalia continues over a 92,389-square-kilometer maritime zone that has long attracted international energy companies. The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2021 awarded Somalia control of most of the area, but Kenya rejected the legally binding ruling over which the court has no enforcement powers. The countries differ over which direction the boundary follows into the Indian Ocean. Experts such as Siyad Madey, a Kenyan lawyer and policy analyst, say the dispute centers on the question of how much potential energy wealth lies beneath the contested waters, which form part of the Lamu Basin that…

Opioids and other synthetic drugs are increasingly invading parts of Africa, attracting organized crime and overwhelming countries’ medical facilities, according to a new study. The proliferation of synthetic drugs has become a complex threat to public health and regional security, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime wrote in a March 2026 report. “Synthesis — Mapping Synthetic Drug Markets in West Africa,” concludes that traditional plant-based drugs, controlled by traditional criminal networks, “are gradually giving way to a fragmented and decentralized market of synthetic psychoactive compounds.” The researchers said the synthetic drugs are responsible for overdoses, chronic illnesses, severe mental…

A global study has concluded that Burkina Faso in West Africa is now the country most affected in the world by terrorism, even more than Mali, its troubled neighbor to the north. The latest Global Terrorism Index says that one-fourth of all extremist attacks worldwide, and nine of the world’s 20 deadliest attacks, came in Burkina Faso in 2024. Three such attacks came in late January and early February 2026, as terrorists with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal- (JNIM) killed at least 38 civilians, abducted nine women and burned property, Human Rights Watch said. The terrorists attacked Sollé village and Tiao…

Batot Air is a cargo service registered in the capital of Burkina Faso. However it appears to fly almost exclusively between the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia, where Sudan’s military leadership claims the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces operates training camps just over the border from Sudan. An investigation by Le Monde newspaper tracked Batot Air’s activity since it began operating in November 2025. The airline operates Ilyushin-Il76 aircraft that spent the last decade sitting unused in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. According to Le Monde, the cargo planes have made at least 36 trips between the UAE and Ethiopia over the past four…