ADF

Yusuf was 5 years old on the night that Islamic State group terrorists on motorcycles raided his village and took him to raise as one of their own. By the time he was 10, he had fought against the Nigerian Army and the rival terrorist group known as Boko Haram. After five years of combat with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the 15-year-old had been hardened to the sight of death and destruction. He explained how young children are indoctrinated into combat: “You want to wear the uniform,” he told British newspaper The Times for a March 13…

Secret meetings, fake documents, smear campaigns and paid local influencers. These were some of the tools that Russian agents used to conduct covert influence operations in Southern Africa during election campaigns between 2019 and 2025, seeking to manipulate political outcomes and keep pro-Moscow governments in power. A network referred to as “The Company” ran operations that targeted Madagascar, Namibia and South Africa, according to The Continent, a pan-African digital newspaper based in South Africa. “Russian operatives engineered narrative-change campaigns across Africa, paid for media coverage and drafted policies for governments,” The Continent wrote in its February 14 edition. “We have…

Al-Shabaab’s attack last October on the Godka Jilacow prison in Mogadishu took place with the help of foreign fighters from across East Africa, the terrorist group reported in a recently released video. The attack on one of the country’s most secure prisons sent shockwaves through the region. Al-Shabaab claimed to have killed more than 40 Somali security personnel. In contrast, the government described the attack as a failure in which the attackers died. It appears that some of those attackers came from Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, according to the al-Shabaab video. Al-Shabaab has a history of recruiting fighters from neighboring…

The defense partnership between Kenya and France reached a new phase in mid-March when three French warships and more than 800 French military personnel docked at the Port of Mombasa during a mission focused on training and maritime security cooperation. The deployment of the Aconit, a frigate, and Dixmude, an amphibious assault ship, aimed to strengthen the countries’ defense ties and secure vital shipping lanes in the Western Indian Ocean. The region faces threats such as human trafficking, illegal fishing, maritime terrorism, and various other forms of smuggling and trafficking. An offshore Finch patrol vessel also participated in the mission.…

Four Chinese fishing vessels in late February were found operating illegally inside South Africa’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and territorial waters without the required permits. The vessels repeatedly switched off their automatic identification system (AIS) transponders, a common practice among illegal fishing offenders. Owned by Shenzhen Shuiwan Pelagic Fisheries, the vessels were tracked 12 nautical miles from the KwaZulu-Natal coast and along the Eastern Cape coastline. The captains of the Zhong Yang 231, Zhong Yang 232, Zhong Yang 233 and Zhong Yang 239 each were fined about $24,118 before leaving the country. “South Africa will not tolerate the unlawful use of its…

Algeria expanded African nations’ presence in space this year with the launch of two satellites in two weeks in January. ALSAT-3A and ALSAT-3B brought to 69 the number of satellites African countries have launched into orbit since Egypt’s NileSat-101 in 1998. Space has become an important frontier for African countries eager to flex their technological muscles and gather data about weather, food security, population movements and other information to help them plan for the future. Algeria developed ALSAT-3A and 3B to deliver high-resolution images of Earth that will boost its capacity for land-use planning and disaster prevention. They came after…

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) said a Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) airstrike that killed at least seven people and injured dozens more during a funeral on March 27 in the Nuba Mountains. The region near the South Sudan border was far from the front lines when Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023, but that has gradually changed since 2025, after the SPLM-N elected to join forces with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the SAF. The SPLM-N controls most of South Kordofan State, which encompasses the mountains. Led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the RSF uses…

As they seek to exert more control over portions of northeastern Nigeria, terrorist groups have attacked military outposts across the region and killed dozens of Soldiers. On April 13, terrorists from Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) attacked a military base in the Borno State community of Monguno. Among the dead was the base commander, Col. I.A. Muhammed, along with four Soldiers. A week earlier, an attack on a base in Benesheikh, also in Borno, killed an unconfirmed number of Soldiers along with the base’s commander, Brig. Gen. Oseni Omoh Braimah. The attacks were the latest in a string of…

A series of explosions in Bujumbura, Burundi’s economic capital, began around 6:15 p.m. on March 31 and did not end until about midnight. The blasts killed at least 13 people and wounded 57 more, including three Burundian Soldiers. Officials said the explosions, which sent projectiles raining down on nearby neighborhoods and plumes of smoke rising above the city were sparked by an electrical accident at the main ammunition depot of the Burundi National Defence Force (FDNB) main ammunition depot in the densely populated suburb of Musaga. The fire spread quickly and triggered a wave of explosions felt well beyond the…

Social media companies have uncovered an effort by Russia to create a fake expert to spread false information in Africa. Russian operatives used a popular artificial intelligence platform to create content for a fictitious academic and geopolitical commentator named “Dr. Manuel Godsin” to infiltrate mainstream media in Africa with pro-Kremlin propaganda. OpenAI said it received a tip from Meta, which owns and operates Facebook, that a Russian network was targeting African audiences with content generated by its large language model application, ChatGPT. The app is trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like language, code, and…