ADF

Chinese companies are present in more than one-third of all African port developments. As noted by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, these companies in some cases dominate the entire port development process from finance to construction and operations. Sometimes, they share ownership. Port development is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Beijing has either financed, built, has a stake in or controls operations of about 78 trade ports in Africa.  “African ports matter to China for one simple reason. They sit at the choke points of trade,” Irina Tsukerman, president of Scarab Rising Inc. and fellow at…

As Sudan’s civil war rages to its south, Egypt has boosted security along its southwestern border to prevent violence and terrorism from spreading into its own territory. In recent months, the Egyptian military added Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drones to a military base near Sudan and reportedly carried out airstrikes against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that have been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for control of the country since April 2023. Analyst Jalel Harchaoui in December claimed on X that Egyptian fighter jets had carried out “destructive airstrikes” in the al-Kufra region of Libya against RSF supply convoys…

A recent investigation has cast light on the shadowy web of operatives, recruiters, social media influencers and travel agents who have ushered Africans into the ranks of Russia’s front-line fighters in Ukraine. More than 1,400 Africans from 35 countries signed contracts with the Russian Army from January 2023 to September 2025, including more than 300 who were killed within months of arriving at the front, according to a February 11 report by Swiss-based investigative group INPACT. “The recruitment of African nationals is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather the core of a deliberate and organized strategy,” the report said. “These…

The terrorist attack on the airport serving Niger’s capital, Niamey, in January provided another example of how Sahelian extremists threaten the security of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and West Africa as a whole. During the January 29 attack, 30 Islamic State-Sahel Province fighters used armed drones, small arms and mortars to assault Dori Hamani International Airport and military Air Base 101. The base houses Nigerien military drone operations and the headquarters for the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The alliance is the mutual defense and economic union Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger created in 2023 after leaving the Economic Community…

With geopolitical fault lines deepening in the Sudanese civil war, experts are warning that there is a growing threat of regional war spilling into the neighboring tinderbox that is the Horn of Africa. Gulf State rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken opposing sides in the Sudan war and have become increasingly polarized in the Horn. “Competition involving the Gulf states and Turkey in the Horn of Africa is exacerbating preexisting African conflicts and risking a regional proxy war on both sides of the Red Sea,” researchers Liam Karr and Michael DeAngelo wrote in a February 24…

The killers came from the Kainji forest in central Nigeria. By the time they were done, the village of Woro was in ashes, and 170 residents were dead. The attack in early February by Boko Harm fighters brought Nigeria’s fight against terrorists out of the northern states of Borno and Sokoto and into the heart of the country. Terror groups are on a quest to create a supply corridor connecting the Sahel to the sea. The Woro attack and three more two weeks later in Borno State follow the same pattern: Terror groups, including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP),…

One of the challenges in Nigeria’s war on terrorism has been the blurry lines between combatants and civilians. Militant groups use human assets and combine local knowledge with a growing use of surveillance technology. Boko Haram and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are strongest in the restive northeast, where espionage and on-the-ground information-gathering form the backbone of their intelligence networks. Attacks by the rival groups in the past year have increased in frequency and intensity in the Lake Chad Basin, which straddles the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. Célestin Delanga, a researcher with…

Monitoring vast expanses of sea requires cooperation and technological tools. During the Cutlass Express 2026 (CE26) maritime security exercise, East African nations and international partners received training on several technological platforms meant to increase their maritime domain awareness while reinforcing longstanding partnerships. Among the technologies utilized was Lightfish a 12-foot, solar-powered unmanned surface vehicle — an interceptor drone — with a modular payload designed for long-endurance missions. The U.S. Navy launched it from a Seychelles Coast Guard ship during the exercise. “We are making history at Cutlass Express 2026 by demonstrating our enhanced warfighting skills through our robotic and unmanned…

African nations lead the world in the use of mobile money, yet weak regulation and poor digital literacy leave users open to abuse by online scammers and other criminals, experts say. Collectively, African mobile users held more than 1.1 billion of the 2.1 billion mobile money accounts worldwide in 2024, according to a recent report by GSMA, the trade organization for mobile operators. Continentwide, mobile money users conducted nearly 900 billion transactions in 2024. Sub-Saharan Africa has become the world’s leader in using mobile finances, accounting for 74% of all mobile money transactions globally in 2024 despite having less than…

After two decades of loaning African nations billions of dollars for infrastructure projects, China now is focused on extracting payments, straining national budgets and threatening security across the continent. Collectively, African nations have gone from receiving nearly $30 billion in Chinese loans between 2010 and 2014 to paying out $22 billion between 2020 and 2024, a swing of $52 billion, according to a recent analysis by One Data, a group that uses open-source information to examine economic issues around the globe. The report was made for the Development Finance Observatory. China has become a net extractor of funds from low-…