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Community-based security groups are emerging in African cities in response to rising crime and overstretched police forces. Experience from Abidjan shows that collaboration with the police, avoiding coercive tactics, and retaining citizen oversight councils are key to the effectiveness of these groups.
Despite much speculation about the connection between Africa’s militant Islamist groups and organized crime, there is very little evidence of convergence between the two. Rather, connections tend to be limited to militant Islamist groups taxing criminals’ enterprises in exchange for safe passage. Even for those who may be more involved in the illicit economy, it’s important to understand why—are they doing it for profit only or for other purposes, such as to fund governance and/or public services for the communities they control. These distinctions have important implications for how best to tackle self-described militant Islamist groups.
A virtual academic program cohosted with the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism that focuses on effective community policing as a tool for countering violent extremism. This program provides an opportunity to capture and share insights, experiences, and lessons, among countries and across regions, about both the implementation challenges in community policing and the practical experiences in bridging gaps between the security sector and the communities they are entrusted with protecting and serving
Russia’s strategic objective of degrading the model of democratic governance in Africa is frequently effected through the cooption of isolated African leaders.
The Africa Center’s analyses examine how navigating Nigeria's challenges go hand-in-hand with fortifying the country’s democratic organs, avenues for youth-engagement, and security sector reforms.
African countries can negotiate a more equitable role in FOCAC, but this requires a more strategically focused approach, better coordination, and greater accountability to their citizens.
Stabilizing northern Mozambique will involve more than defeating violent extremists. It will also require rebuilding trust with marginalized and traumatized local communities.
Tunisia is facing a constitutional crisis rooted in challenges to the separation of powers and the reach of executive authority. The outcome has implications not only for Tunisia but prospects for democracy across North Africa.
MINUSMA relies on diesel for to power its vehicles and its generators. This has implications beyond the security of its fuel supply convoys however, since the diesel trade plays an important part in the political economy of northern Mali. In that region, less than five percent of the population has access to reliable electricity and armed groups often control fuel supply chains. MINUSMA has begun piloting using renewable energy sources, including solar energy. Beyond reducing the exposure of its fuel convoys, such initiatives could also help to build peace by serving as an entry point to renewable energy in northern cities.
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) will conduct a four-week virtual academic program on leadership in times of uncertainty, unexpected security threats, and exogenous challenges, such as pandemics.
A preponderance of COVID vaccine myths is causing many Africans to forego vaccinations at a time when new, more transmissible coronavirus variants are spreading across the continent.
While Russia’s engagements in Africa are often viewed as opportunistic, in the space of a few years Moscow has been able to gain a foothold in the southern Mediterranean, become a powerbroker in geographically strategic countries, and undermine democratic norms on the continent.