ADF

Nathan Nwachuku’s vision of Pax Africana is front and center on his company’s website: “Bringing lasting peace to the continent through African security sovereignty, a future in which Africa builds, deploys and controls its own defense technology.” The 23-year-old Nigerian is CEO of Abuja-based startup Terra Industries, which signed a joint venture agreement in February with Nigeria’s state-run military-industrial ⁠corporation Defence Industries Corp. of Nigeria (DICON) to research and develop drones, robotics and cybersecurity systems. After years of buying drones from China, Pakistan and Türkiye, Nigeria’s military has turned its attention inward, exemplifying a trend across the continent of governments…

China is exporting surveillance technology to African countries that experts say is designed to monitor and control populations with little or no oversight or concern for privacy, personal security and human rights. The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) looked at 11 African countries that have deployed thousands of Chinese cameras in public spaces and concluded that the technology poses significant risks to freedom and facilitates digital authoritarianism. Tony Roberts, a digital research fellow at the institute, and Wairagala Wakabi, executive director of the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa in Uganda, led the team that published…

When two armed groups launched coordinated attacks across Mali on April 25, including a stunning assault on the capital, Bamako, Saheed Babajide Owonikoko thought of Nigeria. A researcher with the Centre for Peace and Security Studies at Modibbo Adama University in eastern Nigeria’s Adamawa State, Owonikoko said Mali and Nigeria have much in common: multiple extremist insurgent groups, porous borders and minimal government presence in rural areas that renders both countries vulnerable to attacks. “As a scholar who has followed the unfolding events in the Sahel, I draw lessons for Nigeria from the April attacks in Mali,” he wrote in…

The Nigerian Navy commissioned three new warships on June 1 during its 70th Anniversary International Fleet Review and pledged to build a more technology-driven force to include advanced surveillance systems, drones, and artificial intelligence in its intelligence and rapid-response operations. AI can improve a navy’s decision-making processes, such as predicting the most fuel-efficient way to operate a vessel. It can be included in a ship’s navigation system, radar operations or threat-detection systems to help operators process information faster. Aerial and surface drones can vastly improve a military’s surveillance capacity. “As we look toward the next decade, under the leadership of…

Synchronized April terror attacks in Mali targeted military bases, an airport and a public official’s home. Strikes by the terror group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the separatist Azawad Liberation Front included swarms of motorcycles, indirect fire and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs). After the siege, several rural military outposts had been overrun, the country’s defense minister was dead, and the rebels controlled the strategic northern town of Kidal. Alioune Tine, a former United Nations expert in Mali, called it a “veritable catastrophe,” adding that the “jihadists struck at the very heart of political power and military security.” Although…

Zambia has unveiled more than $5.8 million in new infrastructure for its Kenneth Kaunda Peace Training Centre, the country’s flagship institution for training military personnel, police officers and civilians for international peace support operations. The handover from the United States at the facility in Lusaka underscores the decades-long security partnership between the two countries and their shared commitment to strengthening African peacekeeping capabilities, U.S. and Zambian officials said. The upgrades include a 400-seat dining hall, outdoor classrooms, an indoor skills range, four secure ammunition storage containers and support for logistical improvements. The center’s new amenities include $4 million to support…

Instability has been a fixture in Central African Republic since at least 2004, when a three-year civil war engulfed the country followed by years of insurgent battles. In an effort to restore order, the government invited Russian Wagner Group mercenaries to serve as trainers in early 2018. By 2019, Wagner had more than 1,000 mercenaries in the CAR, where they embedded in the nation’s political, economic and social institutions, targeting gold, diamonds and timber for extraction. What has emerged is a conflict economy where mercenaries and others profit from continuing chaos in the nation. “Wagner not only infiltrated local markets…

As African militaries increasingly explore AI to boost their capabilities, experts say that it’s crucial to remember the most important element in any AI system is the human element. “The human being needs always to stay at the center of things — in the loop,” Col. Abdel-Aziz Fall, commandant of the Signal Corps Training School for the Armed Forces of Senegal, said during a recent webinar hosted by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Fall and counterterrorism expert Niccola Milnes of NVM Consulting shared their expertise during the webinar “Artificial Intelligence and Counterterrorism.” “We need to understand that AI is…

With terrorism, military conflicts, blockades and piracy threatening the Gulf of Aden and Middle Eastern waters, major shipping companies have chosen to use shipping routes near South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to better protect their crews and cargo. However, experts say that the increase in rerouted ship traffic could expose some of South Africa’s most significant maritime security blind spots. Two researchers with the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, Timothy Walker and Daniela Marggraff, attended a roundtable hosted by the institute at the University of Pretoria on March 31. The subject — the Cape of Good Hope sea route…

The latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread with terrifying speed as hundreds of cases and dozens of deaths were reported in just one week in June. With more than 1,000 confirmed cases, the outbreak is now the second largest on record. The disease is concentrated primarily in the northeastern province of Ituri, and cases also have been found in North Kivu and South Kivu — all in the far reaches of eastern DRC, where terrorists and armed groups make the response to a health emergency even more challenging. But the DRC previously has…