There is a useful new feature on cfr.org, the Council on Foreign Relations’ website. Ask a CFR Expert invites members of the public to submit questions on U.S. foreign policy, and CFR fellows respond to questions that pertain to their own areas of expertise and research. Read more »

The Robert S. Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin has just published a research brief on Islamist violence in Africa; “Tracking Islamist Militia and Rebel Groups.” The author is Caitriona Dowd at Trinity College, Dublin. The brief is based on the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED), of which she is the senior research and data manager. The data covers the past fifteen years. Her discussion includes North Africa as well as sub-Saharan Africa, and she sees a “rising global consciousness among Islamist groups and Muslim populations” in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Read more »

Kenya goes to the polls on March 4 with Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga the only credible presidential candidates. The Ipsos Synovate poll shows that Kenyatta is ahead with 44.8 percent of the vote to Odinga’s 44.4 percent. Kenyatta is ahead in twenty counties while Odinga has nineteen. The polling company identifies Nairobi and three other counties as toss-ups. To win the presidency without a runoff requires the victor win 50 percent plus one of the votes. Under those circumstances, a runoff looks highly likely. Both candidates are longtime political rivals; Kenyatta is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, one of the early African independence leaders and Kenya’s first president. Read more »

President Obama announced in a letter to Congress that he deployed “approximately one hundred” U.S. military troops to Niamey, Niger to establish a drone base to survey the Sahel and the Sahara. This base, which could eventually host up to three hundred U.S. troops, contradicts earlier administration assurances that there would be no U.S. boots on the ground. There has been limited U.S. surveillance of the region before, using light aircraft. However, a drone base dramatically ups the visibility–and the ante. Read more »

Kidnapping is not a part of the repertoire of the radical, diffuse Islamist group called Boko Haram. Some of its alleged spokesmen have denounced the practice. However, kidnapping is common in the Sahel and ransoms are an important source of revenue for the rival criminal networks also involved with smuggling, some of which have links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). AQIM has regularly claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of foreigners. Kidnapping is also a well-established tactic of the criminal groups in the western part of the oil-rich Niger Delta. As in the Sahel, Delta kidnappings are mercenary, with little political content. Most of the Delta kidnappings are of Nigerians, not foreigners–though it tends to be the periodic high-profile foreign kidnappings that make international headlines. In the Sahel, the huge ransoms paid by governments or corporations ensure that most of the victims are foreigners. Read more »

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. Read more »

South Africans often assume that since the end of apartheid, and the coming of democracy in 1994, there has been a huge wave of migration into South Africa from the rest of the continent. Stories abound of entire Johannesburg neighborhoods that are now Nigerian or Congolese–and that immigrants have taken over certain crime syndicates. There have been xenophobic riots against Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa who, with the benefit of higher education standards in their home country, are seen by township dwellers as competition for scarce jobs. Read more »

Over the weekend, a radical Islamist group called Ansaru carried out a sophisticated kidnapping operation in Bauchi, northern Nigeria. The seven victims, all expats, were working for Setraco, a Lebanese owned construction and civil engineering company (none were American citizens). The kidnapping, which also resulted in the death of a security guard, appears to have been coordinated with an attack on the local police station. Ansaru, which may have links to Boko Haram, claimed responsibility in a statement emailed to state media. Read more »

It’s hard to get the details on the logistical arrangements, or numbers, of the ECOWAS force in Mali. The majority of Nigeria’s promised 1,200 troops are reportedly deployed to a military base in Niger, or still stationed in Bamako. However, the Nigerian media organization Premium Times reports that the Nigerian troops actually in Mali are suffering from inadequate provisions, especially food. Citing a “defense source,” Premium Times  reports that Nigerian soldiers are resorting to, in effect, shaking down their Malian hosts under the guise of making “courtesy calls.” Apparently, they ask for–and receive–food, in one case a cow and fifty bags of rice from a prefect. The story is roundly denied by a Nigerian defense spokesman who is quoted, “we have provided the contingent with enough food and funds to last them for the initial three months. Is Nigeria not bigger than that?” Read more »

British, Irish, and Australian bookmakers will place odds on anything. They are already looking at possible successors to Pope Benedict XVI.  The odds change by the minute, but the three favorites include two Africans: Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana and Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria. The bookies’ other favorite is Cardinal Marc Ouellet, of Canada. The British bookmaker William Hill gives Cardinal Arinze two-to-one odds. Coral, also British, gives Cardinal Arinze seven-to-four. An Australian and an Irish bookmaker (among others) makes Cardinal Ouellet the favorite for the moment. Read more »