Rwanda-Burundi Security Relations Beginning to Thaw
In June, 100 gunmen from Burundi attacked a Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) position 1 kilometer inside Rwanda (four gunmen were killed and three RDF troops injured). On August 26, the…
Mozambique: Security Agreement for Natural Gas Project Raises Sovereignty Concerns
On 21 August of this year, French multinational oil and gas company Total signed a security agreement with the Government of Mozambique (GoM) to provide “logistic support” to Mozambican armed…
Polio Is Eradicated and Spreading in Africa: Explaining This Seeming Contradiction
While the world’s eyes and headlines are focused on the comparatively recent COVID-19 disease, news of spread in Africa of polio tends, tends to be buried. However, as the excerpted…
South Sudan’s Disarmament Disaster Leaves Over 120 Dead
In what the excerpted accompanying article from Radio France Internationale describes as a disarmament exercise gone awry, over 120 people were killed in South Sudan’s Warrap State. The death toll…
Mali: Why All of Its Coups Attempts Are Successful
For those keeping count of the number of successful versus attempted coups in Mali, as the excerpted accompanying article from African Arguments—a leading scholarly publication about the region—the tally is…
The African Union’s African Peace and Security Architecture: Underfunded and with Mixed Results
Shortly after the inception of the African Union (AU) in 2002, the foundation was laid for the creation of the AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture, APSA. As the accompanying…
Chad’s Drug Trade Fuels Regional Terrorism
This past July a drug trafficking case tried in Chad was unprecedented both for the quantity of drugs involved—246 cases of the synthetic opiate Tramadol worth approximately 22 million USD—and…
The Militarization of Turkey’s Africa Policy
In the past two decades, Turkey has been steadily raising its profile in several African countries. Turkey’s outreach in Africa is multi-faceted. It includes establishing military bases, finding a market…
The Evolving Russian-Syrian Pressure Campaign in Northeast Syria
Per Arabic-language media reporting, joint Russian-Syrian efforts are underway to extend their influence in northeast Syria at the expense of the US and its allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces…
New Jihadist Group Targets Joint Turkish-Russian Patrols in Idlib, Syria
Over the summer, the hitherto unknown jihadist group “Khattab the Chechen Brigades” claimed several attacks against Russian-Turkish patrols along Syria’s M4 highway. As of early September, they included at least…