Sections

Africa: the next frontier? An in-depth rundown of prominent terrorist organizations in Africa

by ·

In light of recent events in Niger where four US Special Forces soldiers were killed, many people are wondering: who are these terror groups operating in Africa? How many terrorist groups are in Africa? There is no short story to the history of terrorism in Africa, and there have long been Islamic terror groups operating in the region. I will do my best in this article to give a look at the main groups and their area of operations.

Africa is one of the largest continents on the planet with many poor countries and vast stretches of land.  On top of that, many of the countries have poorly trained security forces. All of this culminates into a perfect breeding ground for extremist groups to gather pace. While there are a number of rich countries in Africa, you will find that within these countries there are certain places that are very poor and isolated from the wealthier regions.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING.

Your subscription is important and supports our editorial integrity. Advertisers are sometimes afraid of being associated with controversial news topics, and your subscription is vital to ensuring we can continue to publish the courageous news we are known and respected for.

Get Insider Access and Expert Analysis Today

SUBSCRIBE NOW

or Log In

BECAUSE, FACTS DON’T TAKE SIDES

Your Subscription Supports Honest News Efforts

TRY 4 WEEKS FOR $1.99

Comments

Join our community. To comment on this article please join/login.
Here’s a sample of the comments on this post.

  • Mary Ellen M

    Great overview, Jay. I’ll be eagerly looking for the next installments. This is why I subscribe to SOFREP–it’s nearly impossible to find stories like this anywhere else. Thank you.

  • Jay

    Thanks for the kind words, check my Mali Report when get a chance!

  • Jay

    Thanks brother

  • Jay

    Hi Michael, that’s right it’s a run down of Islamic Terror Group there are a great number of host nation terror groups in Africa. Thanks for reading

  • Michael T

    Great run down, Jay, although I was a little surprised that you didn’t mention any of the terror organizations in Southeast Nigeria. I guess if you were just focusing on Islamic terrorists then you wouldn’t include them because they are Christian and animist. But, since Buhari became President on a platform of eradicating corruption and threatened to (and for a short time did) stop the amnesty payments to the rebels in the Nigerian Delta, they began saber rattling and started some limited raids.
    But, then the whole Biafra independence movement began to rear its head again. I think it is an interesting juxtaposition that when the Southeastern rebels started to become active, the independence movement began to start up again, and, it all coincides with a rise in violence and a movement for autonomy in Southwestern Cameroon, which is the English speaking portion of the country (that I believe was actually part of the English colony of Nigeria before independence in the 60’s).
    A lot of this is way under the radar in the Western news media, probably because it is not causing too much havoc among the civilian population or kidnapping young girls for sex slaves.