West Africa

The military juntas ruling the nations of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso issued a joint statement on Sunday announcing their exit from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Burkina Faso President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba resigned on Sunday, wiping out the government of the West African nation in the second coup of the year and bringing it closer to Russia’s dangerous orbit.

State armies and non-state armed groups in West and Central Africa recruit the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world according to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report released Tuesday.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional economic bloc, suspended the membership of Guinea on Wednesday after a military coup deposed the country’s government on Sunday.

Angelina Jolie made a fly in-fly out visit to a remote camp in Burkina Faso on Sunday to address refugees who have fled Islamic jihadist violence in the region, warning them the threat of climate change is real and could lead millions to a fate like theirs.

Guinea declared a new outbreak of Ebola on Sunday in Gouéké after at least three locals died from the virus.

Spain will send law enforcement personnel into Senegal, Africa, to tackle people-smugglers after illegal migration from West Africa to the Canary Islands increased by 1,000 per cent on 2019.

Experts warn that coronavirus-related school closures in West Africa during the local cocoa harvest season could cause a spike in child labor in Ivory Coast and Ghana, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Police in Cameroon clashed with Muslims on Friday after they refused to adhere to lockdown measures in response to the Chinese coronavirus to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, Voice of America (VOA) reports.

(AFP) — France’s defence minister departs for Washington on Sunday hoping to convince officials to keep U.S. soldiers in West Africa, where French authorities are under pressure after years of trying to bolster local forces against Islamic extremists.

PAU, France (AP) – France is preparing its military to better target Islamic extremists in a West African region that has seen a surge of deadly violence. But first, French President Emmanuel Macron is asking African heads of state to answer a key question: “Do you want us there?”

Chain migration — whereby legal immigrants are allowed to bring their foreign relatives to the United States with them — is responsible for bringing to the U.S. a West African national convicted of brutally murdering two South Boston, Massachusetts, doctors.

A West African national who was allowed to keep his green card and remain in the United States was convicted on Tuesday for murdering two Boston, Massachusetts, doctors in 2017.

The tragic death of a young Liberian boy has proven that women are capable of hosting and spreading the deadly Ebola virus.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Sunday met with leaders from more than 40 nations in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss the threat from terrorist groups and to hear how the United States military could help partner militaries prevent the spread of terrorism.

GAO, Mali (AP) — On his first official trip outside Europe, new French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday highlighted his determination to crush extremism but said “other countries can do more” to help protect Europe from the threat. He was visiting France’s largest overseas military operation, which is combating jihadist groups in West Africa.

A 24-year-old Nigerian shared his ordeal as one of the thousands of West Africans who have traveled to Libya where their traffickers forced them into “a grim and violent world of slave markets, private prisons, and brutal forced brothels,” reports the Guardian.

In the West, pregnancy outside of marriage is acceptable, and abortion on demand is considered a woman’s right. But in the West African nation of Senegal, it is taboo to be pregnant while unmarried, and abortion is not legal.

The U.S. military, perhaps inadvertently, may have eradicated opium poppy crops when it dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists in the Achin district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.

The Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS) is expected to adapt to the imminent collapse of its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, in part, by continuing to expand its international criminal enterprise, particularly the drug trade.

Shawqi Awad Balzuhair, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist from Yemen, has been transferred from the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the island nation of Cabo Verde off the coast of West Africa, where al-Qaeda is believed to have set up sleeper cells and is recruiting jihadists to train in Yemen.

The leader of the Nigeria-based Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) wing Boko Haram is reportedly featured in a video recently posted on social media denying claims by the Nigerian military that he had been seriously wounded and warning, “you have not seen the worst yet.”

This Islamic State released a video Wednesday touting the successes of its African affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the terror group more popularly known as Boko Haram. The jihadists in the video vow to enslave the entire continent, beginning with the conquest of Niger.

Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah is generating hundreds of millions from a “cocaine money laundering scheme” in Latin America that “provides a never-ending source of funding” for its terrorist operations, a former DEA operations chief recently told U.S. lawmakers.

Nigeria may claim to have “won the war” against the Islamic State-affiliated terror organization Boko Haram, but for neighboring Chad and Niger, the battle rages on.

The Nigerian military has announced a successful operation to disable four Boko Haram female suicide bombers, in which soldiers were forced to disarm and arrest two other women, one holding a baby.

The government of Nigeria is denying a report in The Telegraph that Boko Haram has offered to return the schoolgirls abducted in April 2014 in exchange for $56 million, noting it is still trying to verify similar reports, as well.

The Nigerian military has issued an offer to Boko Haram jihadists seeking to surrender to hand over their arms and join the nation’s first jihadi rehabilitation camp, where the government hopes to train the former terrorists to work and prepare them to reintegrate into society.

Rumors are flying in Nigeria following the release of a video featuring alleged members of the Islamic State-affiliated terror group Boko Haram, in which jihadists claim the group is still active and dangerous. The head of a regional youth organization claims the men are actors, paid by con artists hoping to extort the Nigerian government.

The government of Guinea confirmed Wednesday that five people had died after contracting the Ebola virus in the southern border state of Macenta, prompting a closing of the border and a manhunt for hundreds of villagers suspected of having had contact with the virus.

A high-ranking British official has revealed that Western intelligence agents were able to locate dozens of the nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 months after the abduction, but refused to act to save them, citing the danger of multiple deaths during a rescue attempt.

The government of Guinea has confirmed four cases of Ebola and two deaths, the first in months following the official conclusion of the 2014 outbreak in that country that took the lives of over 11,000 people.

Anonymous Nigerian soldiers have told media outlets that a group of Boko Haram terrorists and their hostages, number 76 people, have surrendered to the military in northeast Borno state. The terrorists surfaced from the forests in which they were hiding “begging for food,” one witness stated, having chosen surrender over starvation.

The government of Cameroon announced this weekend that it had waged a siege on the town of Kumshe alongside Nigerian forces, killing dozens of Boko Haram terrorists and liberating up to 850 hostages.

The Nigerian military has announced the liberation of 195 Boko Haram captives after a raiding they described as a terrorist-operated market and pharmacy outlet in northeastern Borno State. Nigeria has struggled to prevent the jihadist group from staging more terror attacks since the nation declared victory in January.

The government of Nigeria may have declared the war won against Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, but new evidence has surfaced that they not only remain active, but have deep ties within the Nigerian military. Officials arrested two soldiers this week for having provided government-issued weapons to the jihadist terror group.