Africa Center Commentary & Analysis

A Conversation with H.E. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and most populous country, with an economic growth rate that will land it among the world’s top 20 economies by 2030—if projections hold. That is an open question, as the country remains dogged by well-known security problems, growth and reform challenges, poverty, and other barriers to achieving its full growth potential.

Boko Haram Takes, Holds Territory

By J. Peter Pham

Bottom Line Up Front:• Like its putative Islamic State counterparts in Iraq and Syria, the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram has in recent weeks accomplished an alarming expansion of its territorial control • The downing of a Nigerian fighter jet—and the videotaped beheading of its pilot—also suggest a quantum leap in the group’s offensive and propaganda […]

Combating the Ebola Outbreak

By Atlantic Council

The Ebola epidemic, currently affecting multiple countries in West Africa, seized the US news cycle on September 30 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the first case of Ebola in the United States. The epidemic has already claimed more than 3,300 lives, and the CDC last week reported the possibility of […]

Short-Term Crisis or Long-Term Transformation? South Sudan’s Civil War in Focus

By Atlantic Council

Exactly one year ago at an Atlantic Council forum, Africa Center Senior Fellow Gérard Prunier outlined the political dynamics in Sudan and South Sudan and predicted that tensions in the latter would soon lead to open conflict. Two months later, he was unfortunately proven correct: in December 2013, South Sudan began its rapid descent into […]

Beyond the Immediate Tragedy: Ebola’s Long-Term Implications

By J. Peter Pham

The deaths of more than 3,000 people from the Ebola virus have stunned and, indeed, frightened the world. The outbreak now hits home — ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first case in which Ebola has been diagnosed outside Africa, in a man from Liberia who took a commercial flight […]

Transition Seminar for Incoming Head of African Union Mission in Somalia

By The Atlantic Council

The Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted a transition seminar for H.E. Maman Sidikou, incoming African Union (AU) special representative for Somalia and head of the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), on Tuesday, September 9.

As ISIS Upends States in the Mideast, Boko Haram is Doing the Same in Africa

By New Atlanticist

Governments and Media, Seized With Iraq-Syria Crisis, Are Paying Scant Attention in Nigeria In the ninety days since ISIS militants suddenly seized Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, international news media, governments, and even last week’s NATO Summit have swung their attention and agendas to debating how to counter the explosive growth of the group’s apparent capacities […]

Africa’s Islamic State?

By J. Peter Pham

Even as, coming out of the annual NATO summit in Wales, the United States and its allies are promising to ratchet up their response to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, another militant group, Boko Haram, is rapidly gaining ground in Africa, achieving many of the same operational and strategic successes that have made […]

Succession in Somalia: al-Shabaab after Godane

By Joshua Meservey

  Ahmed Abdi Godane, leader of al-Shabaab, the Somali terrorist group and al-Qaeda affiliate, may have been killed in a US airstrike on Monday. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the military was gunning for Godane in the strike and that it was confident it hit the target, though there is no confirmation Godane is […]