Mali

ADF STAFF Hostility from Mali’s ruling junta toward the United Nations is making it more difficult for the country’s peacekeeping mission to fulfill its mandate. Mali’s military leaders expelled the spokesman for the United Nations’…

ADF STAFF The list of central Malian towns where massacres have occurred is growing as Russia’s notorious Wagner Group expands its reach in the country. In March it was the towns of Diabaly, Nioni and Moura. In April, Hombori, Boni and…

ADF STAFF Feeling pressure to make money, Dayo Sadiq decided to migrate from her home in Benin City, Nigeria, to Mali. She had been promised a job making up to $360 a month to clean houses. Like many other Nigerian women from Edo State,…

ADF STAFF Thousands of Malians are fleeing to the Mbera refugee camp in southern Mauritania to escape escalating violence in central Mali that they say is being driven by mercenaries associated with Russia’s Wagner Group. Wagner Group…

ADF STAFF Inside his shop in northern Côte d’Ivoire, 25-year-old tailor Bassina Konate demonstrates his expertise with the tools of his trade — a sewing machine, scissors, cloth and measuring tape. His business in the town of Kong is open…

ADF STAFF Islamic State attacks in the Sahel have shifted in recent months toward towns along the Mali-Niger border. Civilians continue to pay with their lives. “Armed men arrived on motorbikes and shot at everything which moved,” a…

ADF STAFF In the months since the junta ruling Mali invited Russia’s Wagner Group into the country, more than 450 people have died in military actions carried out by Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) in partnership with Wagner mercenaries,…

ADF STAFF The Islamic State terrorist organization has been decimated in Iraq and Syria in recent years and is now seeking to expand operations in Africa, taking aim at some of the continent’s most fragile regions. African countries…

ADF STAFF Security experts have warned for several years that the extremist violence engulfing the Sahel inevitably would spread south to the coast. Four countries along the Gulf of Guinea — Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo —…

ADF STAFF In a matter of months, Mali’s relationship with much of the outside world has deteriorated profoundly, while Russia is trying to capitalize on a power vacuum it is helping to create. Experts say it’s all part of the…