ADF

In August, authorities in Niger claimed to have killed Bakura Doro, the leader of Boko Haram, in a drone strike on his headquarters on an island in Lake Chad. Boko Haram has denied Niger’s claim. The attack on Doro’s headquarters came at a time when Nigeria’s oldest terrorist group appears to be reemerging after years of decline following fights over territory with its regional rival, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The fighting dramatically reduced Boko Haram’s presence in the region. In recent months, however, Boko Haram terrorists have carried out deadly attacks on communities in northeastern Nigeria and…

Jingjing Zhang is a lawyer and environmental activist who has fought Chinese companies that pollute for decades. Her work has brought her to many countries, where she says her native China is using a hazardous development model: Pollute now, get rich and attempt to clean up later. In May, she visited Zambia to advise villagers whose lives were devastated when a toxic waste spill from a Chinese copper mine caused one of the country’s worst ecological disasters. “Companies have a field day when they come here,” Andrew Kombe, a Zambian lawyer who is representing villagers, told Zhang, according to Inside…

Allied Democratic Forces terrorists are capitalizing on chaos in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as security forces focus on the deadly, northward-advancing M23 rebel group. The Allied Democratic Forces has exploited battles between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and M23 to expand its own operations, which include attacks on civilians and security services. This year, the M23 advanced north to the town of Lubero in the North Kivu province, where both groups had been active but in different areas. “What followed is illustrative of the risk of escalating insecurity through overlapping violence,”…

A surge in gun violence is sweeping across Ghana, with reported incidents more than tripling between the first and second quarters of 2025. In response, Ghanaian authorities are calling for tighter regulations for guns and gun makers. “The rising number of gun-related incidents and the types of weapons identified at crime scenes paint an alarming picture which demands an all-inclusive approach and a robust and more effective legal framework on arms,” Ghana’s National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons wrote in a recent statement. The commission reported 54 gun-related incidents in the second quarter compared to 15 in the…

Civilians in the Lake Chad basin are reporting more attacks by terrorists who loot their property and sometimes kidnap their female family members. The attacks have the hallmarks of a resurgence by the terrorist group Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (JAS), but they also have an added dimension — raids on military outposts in the region. JAS began in 2002 under its founder Mohammed Yusuf. After Yusuf’s death, JAS formed the core of the terrorism group identified as Boko Haram. In 2016, opponents of then-leader Abubakar Shekau split off to form Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The two groups have…

Russia’s war on Ukraine has opened a dangerous front in Africa, as the Kremlin is exploiting and tricking job-seeking civilians into being part of its war machine. Kenyan authorities recently broke up a human trafficking ring accused of targeting vulnerable citizens with fake job opportunities in order to lure them to Russia, where they would be forced to fight against Ukraine. On September 24, the Transnational Organized Crime Unit of Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations found 21 Kenyan men who were “awaiting processing to Russia” at Great Wall Apartments, less than 20 kilometers from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.…

An unfamiliar, chemical-like odor wafted from a farm in the tiny, rural eastern South African town of Volksrust. Suspicious residents alerted authorities, who raided the farm in mid-September and uncovered a crystal methamphetamine laboratory and drugs worth $20 million. Authorities found industrial manufacturing equipment along with scales and lunch boxes filled with meth — known locally as “tik” — at the scene. They arrested five Mexican nationals and the farm’s caretaker, while two others escaped. Volksrust is in the Mpumalanga province, about 225 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg. The bust, the third such operation discovered in South Africa in recent years,…

Still contending with several significant infectious diseases, including cholera, Ebola and mpox, Southern Africa recently received a “game-changer” in the fight to prevent and contain outbreaks. As part of a civil-military partnership, Zambia’s National Public Health Institute took delivery of three mobile disease detection laboratories in late September from the United States Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) Office of the Command Surgeon and the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka. Calling it “a significant boost to regional health security,” the parties said in a September 26 statement that the new facilities and equipment are “poised to modernize infectious disease outbreak response across nine southern…

The French Navy on September 22 seized nearly 10 tons of cocaine worth $610 million from an unflagged fishing vessel in the Gulf of Guinea. About three weeks earlier, the French Navy nabbed nearly six tons of cocaine worth almost $375 million in the same area. These seizures highlight West Africa’s position as a transshipment node for cocaine shipments from Latin America. Since 2019, Western Balkan criminal groups have used West Africa as a key logistical, storage and redistribution hub for cocaine shipments bound for Europe and other areas. According to the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index, cocaine trafficking was the…

Somalia has unveiled a national strategy designed to counter improvised explosive devices, the deadliest weapon used by terror group al-Shabaab. The effort has been in the works since 2023 when experts conducted a baseline assessment of the country’s C-IED capabilities. The new strategy, announced at a September event in Mogadishu, provides a framework for adding more explosive ordnance disposal units to the Somali National Army (SNA) and improving interagency collaboration. “This is a historic milestone for our country. Never before have we had a unified, nationally owned framework to address the IED threat,” said Awes Hagi Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia’s national…