ADF

When authorities in Namibia discovered a Chinese-led “pig butchering” cryptocurrency investment scam in late 2023, they arrested 14 people, including nine Chinese nationals. Authorities charged the group with 222 counts of fraud, racketeering, money laundering, human trafficking and other offenses. “The scam involves a three-stage process: find, raise and slaughter,” Prosecutor General Martha Imalwa said in her affidavit, which was made public in January. Once the victim’s cryptocurrency investment is deemed to have grown fat enough, she explained, it gets slaughtered. “As the investor commits more financially, the scam culminates in a sudden and devastating loss. The investor’s funds disappear,…

There’s a new front in the Lake Chad region’s war against terrorism — the online video platform TikTok. Terrorist groups have long weaponized social media worldwide for recruitment, financing and communication. In the Lake Chad Basin, where a violent extremist insurgency has raged since 2009, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have taken to TikTok, the Chinese-developed video platform known as much for its security vulnerabilities as its popularity with young people. After months of gains by Nigerian security forces, April saw both groups resurgent with deadly attacks throughout Borno State. At least 100 people were…

A terror group known as Mahmuda has attacked rural villages and communities in north-central Nigeria’s Kwara and Niger States, often in and around Kainji Lake National Park. On April 20, the armed group, wearing camouflage and riding motorcycles, attacked a Kwara market and shot dead four Fulani men, a local guard and a 19-year-old who was hit by a stray bullet. “We suspect that they came with a premeditated motive because they fired at the Fulani at close range shooting them in the head,” an anonymous source told Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper. The source said the guard was holding a…

The departure of three Sahelian nations from West Africa’s regional economic system at the end of January undercut collective counterterrorism efforts from Senegal to Nigeria. Restoring that system means overcoming mistrust between the nations of the Sahel and their neighbors, according to experts. One starting point on that journey, according to analyst Eric Tevoedjre of Benin, may be a new diplomatic agreement between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, now operating as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). “Maintaining good relations with the AES states is a strategic imperative for ECOWAS,” Tevoedjre…

Sudan’s civil war began as a struggle between two rival factions, but the battle is growing more complex as armed civilian groups, rebel fighters, and tribal and regional militias have joined the grinding, back-and-forth fray. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) controlled the capital, Khartoum, for two years until March, when the national Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, reclaimed it with the help of armed civilians. “Khartoum was not just a battlefield defeat for the RSF,” Mohamed Saad, a researcher at Charles University in the Czech Republic, wrote for The Conversation. “It was a turning…

Frikkie the rhino was poached and killed years ago, but today she has a new purpose at South Africa’s Wildlife Forensic Academy. In a large, breezy warehouse inside the private Buffelsfontein Game and Nature Reserve, an hour north of Cape Town, Frikkie is one of several animals preserved by taxidermy, painted with fake blood and posed in mock crime scenes amid plants and trees. Students wearing white hazmat suits and blue latex gloves search the grounds for clues as trainers teach them how to find, document and secure evidence before chemically analyzing it in an on-site laboratory. Academy Director of…

High above Morocco’s Kenitra Air Base, Moroccan and United States military medical teams tended to a wounded Soldier on a Moroccan C-130H Hercules transport aircraft. The teams had evacuated the Soldier and worked to stabilize him before transferring him to a hospital. Over Marrakesh, a U.S. Air Force KC-135R Stratotanker streaked across the sky alongside a Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16 fighter jet. In a complex maneuver, the Moroccan jet flew precisely underneath the Stratotanker and performed an air-to-air “dry contact” refueling pass. These events unfolded during African Lion 2025 (AL25), the continent’s largest annual joint military exercise. U.S. Army…

The photos displayed for the gathering of military leaders were alarming. One showed a still from a TikTok video claiming that French fighter jets had bombed the Ivoirian Air Force. Another post declared that Côte d’Ivoire’s chief of army staff had died. Both were lies. “As you can see, he is not dead,” Maj. Guéable Hervé Zeni of Côte d’Ivoire said, gesturing to his commander, who was seated in the audience at the African Land Forces Summit. “He is here with us.” As chief of the Cyber Defense Office of the Armed Forces of Côte d’Ivoire, Zeni leads a team…

Burkina Faso’s leader appeared in a music video with global superstar Beyoncé. Or did he? In fact, the video, which included the song lyrics, “God protect Ibrahim Traoré in the battle for the people’s path, breaking the chains of the empire’s grip,” is just one of hundreds of fakes littering social media sites across the region, according to the BBC. The reach of these videos, known as deepfakes, spans the continent from Ghana to Kenya. They promote Traoré, a military junta captain who took control of the nation in a 2022 coup, as a model of leadership and a hero…

Li Song portrayed herself as a legitimate businesswoman in Zimbabwe, but that portrayal masked a dark reality. Authorities say the woman now known as the “Ivory Queen” or “Cyanide Queen” led a wildlife poaching ring that captured African elephants and shipped them to China. Last year, she was arrested and charged with fraud, perjury and illegally sending foreign money to Chinese accounts. Song, 53, was accused of importing 40 tons of sodium cyanide and hydrated lime from Mauritius to her company, DGL9 Investments, to avoid paying an excise tax. This violated health and environmental laws and public safety protocols. She…