The Regional Security Imperative to Protect the Congo Basin
Coastal West African countries can strengthen resiliency to the threat of violent extremism by enhancing a multilayered response addressing local, national, and regional priorities.
ECOWAS at 50: Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities
H.E. Damtien Tchintchibidja, Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission, highlights the enhanced economic, capacity building, and security benefits that have resulted from closer sub-regional integration.
Topic in Focus
Sahel In Focus
The Sahel has seen the most rapid growth in violent extremist activity of any region in Africa over the past two years. This In Focus page provides a series of Africa Center analyses of Sahel trends and security dynamics.
Africa’s 2024 Elections: Challenges and Opportunities to Regain Democratic Momentum
Africa’s multifaceted 2024 electoral docket provides opportunities to strengthen multipartyism, transition back to constitutionalism following coups, and rebuff perfunctory exercises.
Mapping a Surge of Disinformation in Africa
Disinformation campaigns seeking to manipulate African information systems have surged nearly fourfold since 2022, triggering destabilizing and antidemocratic consequences.
Topic in Focus: Security and Development
Farmer-herder violence in West and Central Africa has increased over the past 10 years with geographic concentrations in Nigeria, central Mali, and northern Burkina Faso. Population pressure, changes in land use and resource access, growing social inequalities, and declining trust between communities have rendered traditional dispute resolution processes less effective in some areas, contributing to the escalation of conflict. Militant Islamist groups in central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, and parts of Nigeria have exploited intercommunal tensions to foster recruitment. This has had the effect of conflating farmer-herder conflict with violent extremism, significantly complicating the security landscape.
As presidential elections approach, Liberia’s increasing vulnerability to instability and economic crisis is evident. Indeed, Liberia’s position across a range of governance indicators has declined since 2015. While accountability mechanisms exist on paper, they are applied only to the letter of the law, rather than to its full intent. Moreover, the executive has worked to scuttle the capacity of oversight institutions. As a result, strengthened institutions have become tools that benefit the elite, and compound corruption and impunity.