Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: The United States expands its joint military operations with Nigeria in the country’s northeast, Senegal’s political schism deepens after the ousted prime minister is elected parliament speaker, and the Trump administration plans to accept more white South African refugees.
In recent weeks, joint U.S.-Nigerian airstrikes have eliminated a top leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and killed 175 militants in Nigeria, according to statements from Washington and Abuja.
The expansion of U.S. operations in the northeast, the epicenter of Nigeria’s insurgency, has been welcomed by Nigerians and politicians fed up with insecurity. So far, the joint strikes have not led to civilian casualties, unlike Nigerian-led strikes, which frequently accidentally kill civilians.
Yet experts told Foreign Policy that Washington may find itself facing the kind of animosity it experienced in the Sahel if military operations don’t change Nigeria’s complex, decadeslong insurgency, which has metastasized in recent years into a “ransom economy” as armed groups murder and kidnap citizens across the country for profit.
