August 25, 2026
Africa is witnessing a scramble for control, but this time the contestants are not colonial powers planting flags. They are terrorist organisations, criminal syndicates, traffickers, mercenaries, kidnappers, and armed groups exploiting Africa’s weaknesses. The result is a continent where insecurity is becoming an alternative system of power. The warning from US Africa Command (AFRICOM) should therefore be read beyond its headline. AFRICOM says the flow of drugs from the Americas through Africa toward Europe has increased nearly six fold since 2024. More ominously, terrorism and organised crime are converging. In Mali, a $50 million hostage ransom reportedly helped finance an al Qaeda linked offensive across the Sahel. JNIM, estimated at 7,000-8,000 fighters, operates across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and increasingly toward Benin and Togo.
This is the new African security landscape: jihadism feeding on kidnapping; kidnapping financing terrorism; drug trafficking supplying criminal networks; illegal mining sustaining armed groups; porous borders facilitating weapons and fighters; and weak governments losing control of territory. Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel, and Nigeria demonstrate versions of the same pathology. Is this another Scramble for Africa? In some respects, yes – but it would be simplistic to attribute the crisis to an offshore conspiracy. Foreign mercenaries, geopolitical interests, illicit resource networks, and external financing intersect with local grievances and criminal entrepreneurship. Africa’s resources – gold, oil, lithium, cobalt, diamonds, and other minerals – add incentives. But African actors themselves are willing participants in these networks.
