Old Playbooks, New Threats: Africa’s Evolving Security Landscape

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Old Playbooks, New Threats: Africa’s Evolving Security Landscape"

Podcast: Into Africa (CSIS)
Airdate: July 2, 2026
Host: Oge Onabogu
Guests: Dr. Olajumoke (Jumo) Ayandele (counterterrorism & human security/ACLED), Peter Bofin (conflict researcher/ACLED, specialist in Mozambique)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Africa’s changing security landscape, focusing on the evolution of threats, the adaptation of violent groups, and the effectiveness—and limitations—of current policy and international responses. The conversation challenges conventional wisdom about insecurity, emphasizing emergent forms of violence, the growing role of digital technologies, and the critical dimension of governance and legitimacy in both fueling and resolving conflict.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Evolving Contours of Security Threats

• Africa's security issues now extend far beyond traditional insurgencies and terrorism into digital and hybridized forms.
  • Jumo (03:02): “Insecurity as we know it is increasingly becoming digitalized… armed groups are operating in both physical and digital spaces… using TikTok… WhatsApp for their propaganda, recruitment, intelligence gathering, fundraising, even community building.”
• Artificial intelligence is accelerating the sophistication and reach of extremist propaganda.
• Despite changing tactics, the core drivers—weak state presence, local exclusion, contested legitimacy—remain constant.
• African governments are not passive and are making strategic choices about partnerships, security priorities, and sovereignty, but whether this produces citizen security or just temporary control is unresolved.

2. Adaptation and ‘Resilience’ of Extremist Groups

• Extremist groups are “more resilient, not weaker” as they:
  • Shift from holding territory to forming mobile, decentralized cells.
  • Diversify income sources, including local financing and criminal networks.
  • Retain influence through robust digital networks even after physical defeat.
  • Exploit physical and digital ecosystems making them harder targets.
  • Dr. Ayandele (10:00): “Physical defeat does not necessarily translate into informational defeat… What we're confronting is an entire ecosystem that is producing and sustaining insecurity.”
• Groups function less as insurgents, more like “adaptive ecosystems,” blending criminality, digital prowess, and community grievances.

3. Mozambique: A Microcosm of New Threats and Old Responses

• After initial military successes (2023–2024) by Rwandan and SADC interventions, insurgents adapted—shifting tactics, leadership, and community engagement.
• Peter (13:59): “What we have seen is really, really successful adaptation by the group… a less violent, nevertheless coercive, approach to some communities, embedding into commercial networks, especially via mobile money systems.”
• Local grievances and historical marginalization fuel insurgency in Cabo Delgado; economic exclusion remains central.
  • Peter (17:58): “The insurgency is really driven by the marginalization of Cabo Delgado, which goes right back to the colonial period.”
• The result is a two-tiered region: well-protected enclaves (for strategic investments) versus under-governed zones where militants operate with impunity (20:40–21:57).

4. Limits of Conventional Counterterrorism

• “Over-securitization” misses the point when root causes are governance, marginalization, and failure to deliver services.
  • Jumo (25:07): “Mozambique demonstrates that if we continue to treat violent extremism as solely a counterterrorism problem, then we are going to miss much of the story.”
  • Even when fighters are expelled, “conventional counterterrorism cannot rebuild trust or resolve grievances over land, livelihoods, or representation.”
• The role of the state is “essential, but not automatic”—legitimacy is the real hinge. States that exclude or abuse only deepen insecurity (27:04–28:17).
  • Jumo: “For me, the bigger question is legitimacy. Legitimacy is going to determine whether state presence becomes part of the solution or part of the problem.”

5. Fragmented Global Response and Shifting International Priorities

• International engagement is “selective and fragmented.”
  • Many partners frame Africa as a “risk management problem” rather than a region for strategic partnership (31:16–35:50).
  • Jumo: “Our global responses are only going to continue to remain fragmented and might seem ineffective looking from the outside in.”
• Rising convergence between organized crime and terrorism makes the threat landscape more complex.
• Peter: “It’s become a very complex situation. The focus of different states around their own individual economic interests… tends to be what is driving things.” (36:08)
• Responsibility for persistent insecurity lies primarily with domestic governance failures, although flawed international incentives can exacerbate issues (38:41–39:35).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jumo (03:02): “We are still fighting today’s conflicts with yesterday’s playbook… But I do want to emphasize African agency.”
• Peter (07:38): “At the ground level… interventions are somewhat ad hoc… basic things like information sharing, developing means of operating together, we’re seeing problems…”
• Jumo (10:00): “Physical defeat does not necessarily translate into informational defeat.”
• Peter (13:59): “What we have seen is really, really successful adaptation by the group… embedding into commercial networks… through mobile money networks… That is actually sustaining the insurgency.”
• Jumo (25:07): “The security question is also a governance question. We need to be asking ourselves: who benefits from economic development? Who feels represented? Who receives protection?”
• Jumo (31:16): “This is my call to shift the way of thinking… communities are also political actors themselves, making calculations about their survival and legitimacy.”
• Jumo (38:41): “No one is coming to save us—domestic governance failure remains central… legitimacy is ultimately built or lost at home.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:01 – 03:02: Framing the episode: Introduction to evolving threats and “old playbooks.”
• 03:02 – 05:30: Jumo on new threat landscape: Digitalization, African agency, and the limits of old frameworks.
• 05:47 – 07:38: Peter on breakdown of multilateral security responses and on-the-ground adaptation.
• 08:12 – 11:01: Are violent groups weaker or more resilient? Measuring adaptation.
• 13:59 – 17:08: Peter discusses "quiet persistence" of insurgents in Mozambique, especially adaptation with mobile money.
• 17:58 – 21:57: History and drivers of the Cabo Delgado crisis.
• 22:24 – 25:07: The importance of political economy and governance lens over purely ideological analyses.
• 27:04 – 28:17: The state's role: legitimacy over mere presence.
• 31:16 – 35:50: International responses: selectivity, fragmentation, and the crime-terrorism “ecosystem.”
• 38:41 – 40:13: Who bears more responsibility? The primacy of domestic governance failures.
• 40:30 – 43:38: Rapid-fire: Is the main failure diagnosis or strategy? Are we normalizing insecurity? What assumptions should policymakers drop?
• 44:21 – 47:08: Personal endnote: Resilience and hope—African agency and cultural touchstones.

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Policy Reflections and Calls to Action

• Misdiagnosis vs. Strategy Failure: Jumo argues it’s a diagnosis problem (“if we misunderstand the problem, the strategy will always be inadequate”), while Peter points to failures in implementation.
• Danger of Normalization: Both guests warn of the risk that chronic insecurity is becoming “normalized” in certain regions—violence accepted as the new status quo.
• What Policymakers Get Wrong:
  • Jumo: Stop treating human security as a “buzzword”—it must become central to policy and strategy (42:56).
  • Peter: Move away from a default “transnational Islamist threat” frame and focus more on local dynamics and causes.
• Hope in Agency:
  • Jumo: “What gives me hope is African agency… women mediating conflict, youth building resilience, local leaders holding institutions accountable.”
  • Peter: Inspired by ordinary people’s resilience (“public administrators who humble us…”) and literature that highlights Africa’s global connections (reference to Anna Mananza’s novel Penzila Damo).

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Flow & Tone

The episode combines sober analysis with underlying hope. The tone is pragmatic and sometimes urgent, but always grounded in both on-the-ground reality and a faith in African agency and solutions. Dialogue moves seamlessly from granular data and anecdote (particularly on Mozambique) to broader conceptual challenges for policy, without losing sight of the human dimensions.

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For Listeners: Takeaways

• Africa’s security threats are evolving more rapidly than policy responses, driven by digital adaptation, hybrid criminal-ideological networks, and persistent governance failures.
• Solutions must move beyond conventional military frameworks to address root causes—especially legitimacy, inclusion, and human security—otherwise, cycles of violence will endure.
• International support is crucial but must shift from fragmented, self-interested engagement to authentic partnership with local and regional actors.
• Most crucially: African agency, creativity, and resilience are not only present, they are foundational to future security and hope.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[A]

What if Africa's biggest security threat today isn't where policymakers are looking? The Sahel now accounts for more than half of the continent's militant extremist violence, while cybercriminals are targeting governments, banks, and critical infrastructure at an unprecedented pace. We tend to think about insecurity in terms of insurgencies, terrorism, or regional crisis. But the reality is that the threat landscape is changing, and in many cases changing faster than the policies designed to address it. So here's the question we're asking. Are we keeping up or falling behind? Welcome to Into Africa, a podcast where we explore Africa's geopolitical landscape, its evolving global role, and the challenges and opportunities shaping the continent's future. I'm your host, Oge Onabogu, Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the center for Strategic and International Studies. And welcome to season two of Into Africa. This season, we're taking a closer look at the intersection of people, power, and politics across the continent. We'll tackle difficult questions, challenge conventional wisdom, and engage with some of the sharpest minds to explore the forces shaping Africa and its place in the world. To kick off the season, we're focusing on the evolving nature of security threats across Africa, how extremist groups are adapting, how conflicts are changing, and whether governments and international partners are keeping pace. To help us unpack these issues, I'm joined by Dr. Olajumoke Ayandele, whose work focuses on counterterrorism and human security in Africa, and Peter Bofin, whose research examines conflict dynamics in Mozambique and broader trends in insecurity across the continent. Both are affiliated with acled, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence and protest events around the world in real time. Jumua and Peter, thank you for joining me today.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

Thank you for having us.

[A]

So let's get right into the conversation. So, security threats in Africa are evolving in tactics, in mobility, in financing, and geography. Africa. Are our responses adapting fast enough? Jumo, I'm going to start with you. Let's look at the big picture level here. Are we dealing with a fundamentally new era of insecurity in Africa, or are policymakers still applying old frameworks to change threats? In other words, are we still fighting today's conflict with yesterday's playbooks?

[C]

I would say we are facing a changed security landscape, but it's not necessarily an entirely new one. And that's because many of the underlying drivers remain familiar, whether that is weak state presence, especially when we think about border communities or feelings of exclusion by local communities or corruption or feelings of uneven development, especially when we think about the periphery or contested legitimacy or unresolved grievances. But what I would say has changed is the way we are seeing a lot of armed groups and violent extremists, groups adapting and exploiting these conditions. And that's because insecurity as we know it is increasingly becoming digitalized. So when I think about a decade ago, counterterrorism focused primarily on whether it was territory, weapons or physical networks. But today we're seeing a lot of armed groups operating in both physical and digital spaces. And we can see that with especially, you know, Islamic State affiliated groups or Arcadia affiliated groups using TikTok or Telegram or WhatsApp for their propaganda, for their recruitment, for intelligence gathering, for fundraising or even community building. And I would say AI artificial intelligence has really helped to lower this barrier, has really helped in increasing access for these groups, whether it comes to their ability to produce persuasive content, or their ability to translate messages across various languages or generating propaganda material. So, yes, in many respects, we are still fighting today's conflicts with yesterday's playbook. But I do want to say and emphasize African agency. Our governments and the institutions are not necessarily passive actors in this particular story. They are making strategic, strategic choices about their partnerships, about their security priorities, about sovereignty. And I'm guessing that's what this discussion today is going to be about. But the question for me is whether these choices are going to produce security for the citizens. This is where human security comes into play, or whether it's simply producing temporary control, which is the big question mark.

[A]

Thank you so much, Jumo, and I'm going to come back to you on that point. But Peter, let me pull you into this conversation now. From the data perspective, with the research that you do on the ground, do you see evidence that the response is keeping pace with how these groups are adapting?

[B]

I want to pick up or take as my starting point what Jumo said about African agency and concerns about sovereignty and new sort of security partnerships that are developing. You can see that positively in some ways, there's a breakdown of the multilateral structures that have traditionally been seen as the architecture or the scaffolding for intervention, or any peace building efforts around conflicts on the continent. But we're now seeing that breaking down decreased legitimacy, such as you see with Monusco, for example, in drc and governments really seeking their own solutions based on their own interests. We see that very clearly in drc. But from my point of view, it's made a little bit more Explicit in Northern Mozambique, where you had the failure of the SADC intervention, which was in 2021, and the preference of the Mozambiquean government for intervention by primarily Rwanda, but later Tanzanian force remaining. And I think that the blind spots here are for policymakers at different levels to understand the motivations and interests of the different national electors involved in these interventions. But at the ground level, these interventions are somewhat ad hoc. So you don't have standard operating procedures, if you like, that you may have had with multilateral interventions. So just on basic things like intelligence sharing, information sharing, developing means of operating on the ground in cooperative supportive ways between those government forces and intervention forces, we're seeing problems around that in Northern Mozambique, particularly between the Mozambique military and the Rwandan intervention forces. So there's problems on the ground while we're seeing sort of broader. You can frame them as positive developments at a macro level, but it does lead to challenges on a day to day basis.

[A]

Thank you, Peter. And I know a lot of your research is focused on Mozambique, so we're going to come to Mozambique later on in the conversation. But I'd want to go back on the question on adaptation. So as you all have pointed out, we're seeing smaller mobile sales, more localized financing, we're seeing the role that technology is playing and we're seeing more flexible tactics by some of these groups. So are these groups becoming weaker or are they becoming more resilient? Juma, why don't you jump in here?

[C]

Yeah, I'm definitely happy to jump in and I'm not sure about Peter, but I would say for me, and in many cases that I have been monitoring, they're becoming more resilient. If I think about counterterrorism and the way that we measure success, we always measured the ability of these groups, ways of holding territory. So we measured their strength by are they able to hold territory, how many fighters do they have? How many fighters have they been able to mobilize, Are they able to mount or conduct large scale attacks? But many of these groups have basically shied away from these visible indicators. And I think it's for good reason. They are more nimble. And that's because when you are a smaller and a more mobile cell, it's harder for governments to target you. We've also seen that they have been able to diversify their income streams, they've been able to localize financing. And I'm thinking a lot about, you know, groups that are affiliated with, whether it's the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, because they want and they have Been able to reduce this dependence on external funding and this diversified revenue streams are making organizations harder to disrupt. As I said, technology is definitely a big one. It's changing what we and how we see resilience, what it looks like. So a lot of these groups, and the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are good examples, have lost territory, physical territory, but they continue to maintain their influence through their various digital networks. So we are seeing a lot of smaller cells operating in remote areas, but they're able to reach potential recruits, whether it is across borders, whether it is within broad borders through online platforms. So what does this mean for us when we think about counterterrorism? For me, it means physical defeat does not necessarily translate into informational defeat. Many extremist organizations are not operating like insurgent groups anymore. It doesn't pay them to operate like insurgent groups anymore. They are operating more like what I call adaptive ecosystems. So they are drawing on criminal networks, they are drawing on digital technology, they are drawing on local grievances, they are drawing on the transnational connections. And the challenge for us is that we're often trying to dismantle these individual groups when really what we're confronting is an entire ecosystem that is producing and sustaining insecurity.

[A]

I want to push you on that a little bit there. From a human security lens, from all that you have laid out, does this now make these groups harder to defeat?

[C]

And are we.

[A]

When we look at sort of the. The evolving nature of these threats on the continent, are we moving towards threats that can't really be sort of definitively defeated, only managed?

[C]

I would first say, I want to be careful about the word defeated. I'm going to put defeated in right. And that's because armed groups can absolutely, absolutely be weakened. Their territorial control can be reduced, their leadership structures can be disrupted. I'm thinking, for example, about what happened last month with the senior Islamic State leader, Abu Bilal Manuki being killed in Nigeria. So that can definitely happen. But if we are going to define victory as permanently eliminating these conditions that are allowing these groups to emerge, then military operations alone is not going to get us there. And that's because a lot of these threats are proving so durable because they're increasingly embedded within broader economic and social ecosystems. Again, the challenge is not defeating fighters or funding. From a human security perspective, security means more than just the absence of attacks. It means safety, dignity, livelihood, justice, trust in institutions and rebuilding all of this. And I say this because when I go on the field, when I talk to communities, when I talk to people in idp, camps. This is how they define security. Security. Right. And if communities continue to remain displaced, if they continue to be feelings of marginalization, if they continue to be distrustful of state institutions and regional institutions, then we are not really dealing with the conditions that are going to continue to sustain violence. It's just going to remain intact. So from a human security lens, it's going to be very, very hard to defeat these groups. It's not imposs, but we have to tackle the structural conditions that allow for these groups to emerge, and they're social and economical.

[A]

Thank you so much for that. Now, Peter, let me pull you into the conversation. From your research, what does the data, from the work that you've done in Mozambique, what does that data tell us about adaptation versus decline of these groups? Do the patterns suggest containment or sort of quiet persistence?

[B]

Oh, I think it's very much quiet persistence. Back in 2023, I think I was alone amongst my colleagues in thinking that we might be seeing the end of that conflict. And I was very much wrong. The Rwandan intervention and the SADC intervention had sort of significant successes. It greatly reduced the size of the group. It took back one significant town that was under the control of Islamiste Mozambique. It broke up their logistics systems, and they lost a lot of their materiel through quite aggressive operations by SADC and Rwanda. And their actions really went down. They seemed to be on the run, on the back foot. But what we have seen is really, really successful adaptation by the group. We've seen a leadership change after intervention. We saw a shift towards, as Duma pointed out, operating in sort of more mobile configurations which conventional forces find difficult to address. And we saw a very significant change in how they engage with communities. So that communities on the coast, from which an area from which some of the leaders of the insurgency emerged originally, they've taken a less violent, nevertheless coercive, but a less violent approach to those communities where we're trying to build relationships with those communities and develop an area of influence that I presume that they will hope will develop into an end claim in future years. It's not a huge area, but it enables them to resupply quite easily, both by land and by sea. It allows them to embed into commercial networks that reach into urban centers in Northern Mozambique. And a critical way, in fact, in which they're doing that is through mobile money networks. So, for example, they raise a significant amount of money through ransom, which is gathered at roadblocks. Or, for example, just, I think it was last week or the week before the Kidnap of miners at informal mining sites, and payment can be made by a victim's relatives or the victims themselves very quickly through mobile money. So mobile money systems in Northern Mozambique are in many ways actually sustaining the insurgency because most of their money seems to be flowing through these networks. And it's remarkable how the oversight systems have broken to hand. And outside of this area of influence, in areas that have a different set of characteristics on the coast, it's people of primarily one ethnic group, Mohani, who speak a particular language, have particular sets of livelihoods, are predominantly Muslim. So it's easier, if you like, for the insurgents to frame their fight in Islamic State ideological terms. And outside of that, they're still continuing to take quite a brutal approach to civilian populations, but probably more focusing on being able to control the main traffic routes in the province and also increasingly trying to control informal gold and gemstone mining sites as a source of income. So, yeah, they're very adaptable in a number of ways. I can imagine them persisting with this area of influence that they're developing that may become an end play for some years to come. It's quite alarming.

[A]

Thank you so much. Peter, let's dive a little bit deeper on Mozambique because not all our listeners will be familiar with the situation in Mozambique. And you alluded to this briefly in your last response where you said, you know, there is a narrative that the situation in Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, that the situation has stabilized. But does the data that you've collected or the evidence that you've collected, does it actually support this narrative? So if you could just give us some background on the situation in Mozambique, especially for our listeners who are not familiar with the situation on the ground, and also touch on how important are local grievances, marginalization and economic exclusion in shaping the current conflict.

[B]

Yeah, I started working on this conflict before this insurgency began in Tanzania, on the northern side of the border. And Tanzania, around 2017, which is when the insurgency broke out in northern Mozambique, did successfully contain what had been a growing insurgency in the country's southeast. And it did that through a sort of combination of at times quite brutal security measures, but also political actions as well by the ruling party of the administration and then the security apparatus. So in 2017, as the insurgency broke out here, I really thought it wouldn't be lasting that long. And I'm really quite depressing in 2026. We're still here talking about it, but like the insurgency and the sort of proto insurgency in Tanzania, sort of 2015-2017, that has its Roots in quite radical Islamist movements that have been active across East Africa for many years that were sort of promoting a rejection of democracy, of secular authorities, of secular education, even upending sort of traditional relationships between parents and children, etc. And the Armed group in Northern Mozambique grew out of these networks and finally, yeah, in 2017, sought to develop some sort before its affiliation with Islamic State, looking to implement some sort of administration that's based on Islamic principles. In Northern Mozambique, the affiliation with Islamic State probably was there from early days, initially some outreach in 2018, and it finally became a full province in May of 2022. The insurgency is really driven by the marginalization of Cabo Delgado, which goes right back to the colonial period. It wasn't even part of the Portuguese colonial project in any meaningful sense, but it wasn't even part of that. And since independence has really always been marginalized, as power has been concentrated in Maputo, over a thousand kilometers to the south. So it's very marginalized, has had very little public investment in it. And consequently it's a marginalized population that was really ripe for radicalization, if you like, or for radicalization to take root in such conditions in a way that was maybe not possible in Tanzania, which had a very different historical trajectory through both the colonial period and the later nation building under ccm. That's what got us to this point. And the conflict itself has not made it easier to address these issues of exclusion. You still have hundreds of thousands of people displaced. Public administration, education, health services, basic registries for land, birth certificates, et cetera, have all been undermined and are not operating properly across much of the province. So really it has sort of systemically made things worse. And now with the Rwandan intervention, which is there solely to protect the investment in the natural gas fields and the offshore and the liquefaction plants that will be built onshore, that's sort of leading to the development of like a two tier capital, Ghato, where you have the northeastern corner of the province from Usumba to Praya, northwards into Palma towards the Tanzanian border, being very well protected by a well armed and equipped Errandan force operating alongside a weaker Mozambiquean force and south of there a much weaker security presence where Islamic State Mozambique, the insurgents have really quite considerable freedom of movement. For example, in the last two months we've had Zara Stein got in Mozambique moving out of its area of influence south of Musima di Praya into districts further south and maintaining a presence there for up to two months with no significant challenge from the security forces at all, despite them having an actual presence there? Yeah, it's becoming a two tier capital ghetto and that's quite alarming and will ensure that this conflict will persist.

[A]

So, Peter, on that last point, given the situation that we see or the situation that you've described, is Mozambique still best understood through an extremist lens when we're looking at just the changing nature of the threats there, or is it increasingly better being understood or should we better understand it through a political economy, through a lens? A political economy or a governance failure?

[B]

Definitely the latter. A political economy lens is much more fruitful. It is fundamentally an issue of governance failure. The insurgent leaders themselves are quite politically savvy. They're not separate from the community. They are in many ways embedded in it. This was made clear to me by a sort of humanitarian leader I was talking with this morning who said that the challenge they were facing was how to operate in towns where there are no social services, there's very weak local government with most significant officials likely present at all, and where the community feels excluded from the state and its structures and has very strong connections with the insurgents. But their challenge is better understand how they can operate in that environment. The group itself has not publicly declared what its objectives are beyond wanting to have some sort of administration based on Islamic principles. And that predates the coming of Islamic State into this context. But we do hear that they have raised the issue through mediators of wanting to have local leadership positions reserved for people from the neighborhood. That's quite significant and it's also quite doable. It was in fact a long standing demand of Tanzanian Islamist movements on the coast north of the border back around 2012, where outside administrators were viewed as outsiders and sort of described as being Christian, where the ruling system was defined as the Christian system by Islamist activists, nonviolent activists. And the Tanzanian state has been clever in the way that they have reduced their opposition and brought some of those activists in from the cold. Mozambique has frelima, really, and the state and its administration have not been so sure footed. They're not properly embedded and they don't have strong enough structures in northern Mozambique to allow themselves to more subtly meet these demands from communities in the north that gives real ownership over resources, public administration, taxation to interests in the north. That's the challenge they face.

[A]

Well, thank you so much, Peter. A lot of what you described, we see examples of that in several other countries across the continent. So, Jumon, let me bring you in here. So what does Mozambique tell us about the Limits of a conventional counterterrorism approach, essentially. Are we sort of over securitizing what is fundamentally a governance and human security challenge?

[C]

Yes, we definitely are. And I echo a lot of what Peter has said. I love the fact that he laid everything out with what is going on in the region and the historical context of it. I would say Mozambique demonstrates that if we continue to treat violent extremism as solely a counterterrorism problem, then we are going to miss much of the story. What we're seeing in Mozambique is not just about ideology, as Peter has mentioned. It's also about exclusion. It's about marginalization, resource politics, the youth, youth frustration, governance failures and uneven development. And a conventional counterterrorism approach, as we have seen, can push fighters out of certain areas, but it cannot by itself rebuild that trust that is needed between citizens and the state. It cannot resolve the grievances over land, over livelihood, over access, over geography. And for me, Mozambique reminds us that the security question is also a governance question. We need to be asking ourselves who benefits from economic development? Who feels represented, who receives protection, who believes the state serves them? These are questions that matter as much as a lot of these military operations that are going on, just not in Mozambique, but across sub Saharan Africa.

[A]

So I want to push the both of you a little bit here, as you've spoken about the governance challenges and sometimes the role of the state too, as well, in some of these tensions. So if the state is part of the insecurity equation, can it still be treated as the primary solution here?

[C]

I would say the state remains essential, but it isn't automatic. The real question is not whether the state should be central. I think the question is what kind of state presence exists. And that's because a state that extracts, that excludes, or that is seen as abusive can deepen insecurity, as we've seen over the last decade. But on the flip side, we do know that a state that protects, a state that is willing to deliver services, a state that is willing to adapt and adopt transitional justice, and that is wanting to be accountable, these kinds of states, or even communities, because the state might not be doing it nationally, but we can see communities doing this. This might reduce insecurity. So, yes, the state remains central. But for me, the bigger question is legitimacy. Legitimacy is going to determine whether state presence becomes part of the solution or part of the problem. Peter, what do you think?

[B]

Yeah, no, this is a really difficult question. I mean, the obvious and correct answer, I think, is that of course there's a role for the state. But that's quite easy. The challenge is, I think, to try and identify what are the mechanisms that allow the state to, to gain some legitimacy through challenge, through cooperation. While you were speaking, I was trying to think, well, how did that work in Tanzania when the sort of radical insurgent threat really was dealt with through a number of mechanisms. I do think that one key element of it in Tanzania was that you had a very healthy civil society of Muslim organizations. There's a very healthy, lively and multifarious, often very argumentative and difficult to penetrate Islamic civil society in Tanzania. It's much denser, much richer than what you find in northern Mozambique. And in fact, people in northern Mozambique tend to relate to these Tanzanian Islamic civil society networks and thinking maybe more than they do to the equivalent set of organizations, which is really not very many of them and quite weak in Mozambique. So that's one element of it. A second element of it is resource management. The capital ghetto is. It's very rich in minerals, gemstones and gold and it's really poorly managed. Again, I don't want to compare it to Tanzania all the time, but you see outbreaks of violence or just protest by minors or between minors and informal minors and the security forces on a reasonably regular basis. And you used to have that in Tanzania. And that has been very deliberately addressed over the Last sort of 20, 25 years in Tanzania through policy that tries to bring artisanal minors into sort of under sort of supportive government frameworks, through better relations with police, sometimes that coming about through court cases, through international court cases. Indeed, it's been managed much better. So there's a legal framework as well which gives artisanal minors much sort of stronger rights within Tanzania. And there' also tried to set up the sort of market mechanisms that can support people operating in that sector. Whereas in Mozambique it's far from that, but it can be done. So I think there are examples from the region that can be drawn on, but it's not going to change this year or the next. It'll be a long slog over years.

[A]

Thank you so much, Peter. So let me expand from the continent and look more global. In terms of the global response, is there truly a lack of, lack of global response or are we just seeing a quieter, more selective form of engagement? And you know, a second part of this question. Looking at all the changes that we've seen over the last couple of years, are international partners still serious about supporting long term stabilization? Jumo, let me start with you.

[C]

So to all the policymakers who are listening to this. This is my call to think about the response to this shift in landscape. I think it's accurate to describe what we are seeing as selective and fragmented engagement rather than the absence of engagement. So yes, there are international actors that are still involved, but I mean, if we're keeping it 100%, priorities have shifted. So some international actors are more focused on migration. Others are prioritizing great power competition. Others are narrowly focusing on the definition of counterterrorism. But as we know, the challenge when it comes to long term stabilization is going to require sustained political investment. And unfortunately, the continent is increasingly being viewed primarily as a risk management problem rather than a strategic partner. And this is my call to kind of shift that way of thinking. A lot of African governments want to be seen as strategic partners, want to have their solutions, their proposed recommendations taken seriously by international partners when countering a lot of these issues. I also do want to say that a lot of times policymakers are missing three major things when we're thinking about counterterrorism. And that's, you know, the first one is the way that we look at communities. A lot of times we think that communities are either victims or sources of intelligence. But I really want to push us and I want to push international actors to also seeing communities that as political actors themselves. And that's because these communities and local citizens are also making calculations about their survival, about who protects them, about how they are themselves defining legitimacy. And if we don't take that into consideration, our global responses are only going to continue to remain fragmented and might seem ineffective looking from the outside in. Second, we have to really, really consider the governance dimensions of a lot of these conflicts. I know we sort of touched on what this particular armed groups are doing within their territories. But these armed groups are competing with states. They are providing some form of some semblance of order. And this is something that we have to take into consideration if we're really, really going to be effective with our global response. The third one, and I think this is an emerging trend that we need to really, really be on the lookout for. And I want us to be a little bit more proactive than reactive as a global community. Is that nexus? I won't call it nexus, I actually say an ecosystem that we're increasingly seeing between organized crime and terrorism. And this is going to make the landscape a little bit more complex where we're seeing a lot of extremist organizations being involved when it comes to smuggling networks, when it comes to illicit mining. I would even say when it comes to drug trafficking as well as human trafficking routes and other criminal economies. And in a lot of instances, we're seeing this transnational criminal organizations, whether it's from Latin America into West Africa or Southern Africa, cooperating, sometimes they compete, but in most cases they're evolving into hybrid actors that are going to be very difficult for us to categorize. So I really, really want, when we think about our global responses, think about how terrorism and organized crime, think about how these are converging, because I don't want governments to end up tackling one or addressing one part of the problem without tackling the whole ecosystem. That's one trend that's at the back of my mind when I think about the global response, so that it's not fragmented, it's a little bit more coordinated.

[A]

Thank you so much, Jamal. Those are wonderful points that you've laid out. Peter, I'm going to come to you with the same question. From what you observe on the ground when you do your research, does international engagement look strategic and sustained or fragmented and reactive?

[B]

I think it's more fragmented and reactive. It's also maybe a little bit more honest now that the sheen has come off the sort of the Western ideal with war in Europe, division in the states, increasing divisions between European governments around some key strategic issues, and where we're seeing, I think, a lack of coherence and an absence of mechanisms through which policy priorities of individual countries that we're now seeing coming to the fore to be sort of operationalized. An example of that was maybe in recent months when Paul Kagame sort of threatened to withdraw his troops if the Mozambique government and the oil companies, he pointed out, couldn't find a way of maintaining the payments to cover their costs of up to $100 million a year. And that's significant. So this is a very expensive bilateral military intervention by the Rwandans to protect a natural gas investment that is led by French interests and European interests that also has US Interests in it, with no clear mechanisms to support it. And really the only mechanisms that we're relying on, for example, to ensure that human rights are respected in the vicinity of the LNG project is primarily French legislation about business and human rights principles. So it's become a very complex situation. The focus of different states around their own individual economic interests in Northern Mozambique does tend to be what is driving things. You can include Rwanda in that, which sees some level of economic opportunity. I think the diplomatic opportunity and sort of influence opportunity that they see is probably greater, but they do have some sort of commercial interests in Northern Mozambique. They're also promoting, if you like, currently. But these are dwarfed by the continuing interests of primarily Western powers. That becomes a very difficult environment for the Mozambiquean government to navigate, particularly with the economic strains that it's under that have worsened really since the Iran war broke out.

[A]

So I want to fill on this question on global response and on some of the points that the both of you have raised and Jumo, on the point you raised about state sovereignty. We look at these evolving threats on the continent, we look at the domestic governance failures and gaps that exist and we see the fragmented global response. So who bears more responsibility for persistent insecurity? Is it domestic governance failures or flawed international engagement?

[C]

Yeah, on the question of sovereignty, this is, I'm trying to toe the line but also say my mind both matter, both matter. But I would say domestic governance failure is more than international engagement. No one is coming to save us domestic governance failure. Contributing remains central because legitimacy is ultimately built or lost at home. We can't take that away. So if I had to pick, I would say domestic governance failures. But again, international engagement can reinforce problematic incentives when it prioritizes short term stability over long term governance response. But we have to save ourselves, we have to look in words. So bears more responsibility for me, domestic governance failures.

[B]

Peter, I fully agree. We've seen that in Tanzania, despite what happened on October 29th and subsequent days, the days after that. But this, this particular type of threat has been successfully addressed by Tanzania and that wasn't a discrete project. That was the result of decades of state building that has allowed it to address this type of insurgency. And we've also seen it in Kenya. So the Mozambique is particularly weak, but there are examples it can draw on. And yeah, that would give me a little hope, but it would demand quite considerable change in how for Lima on the Mozambican state goes about its business.

[A]

Thank you both. So I'm going to do sort of a quick round of questions now and I'd encourage you to keep your responses here short. So for both of you, are we dealing with a failure of strategy or a failure of diagnosis?

[C]

A failure of diagnosis for me, if we misunderstand the problem, the strategy will always be inadequate. Failure of diagnosis for me, I'm going

[B]

to go the other way because I'm thinking of a PowerPoint presentation I saw by a senior Mozambique military officer where a lot of the issues we've raised about marginalization of communities in Northern Mozambique and the inability of Maputo to respond to and communicate with them was Laid out really clearly and was wondering what to do. That was about four years ago. So I think there's an awareness in Maputa of what the issues may be that they don't really have the structures to address it. Possibly.

[A]

We love it when our guests are on different pages. Second question. Are we normalizing chronic insecurity in parts of the continent?

[C]

In some places, yes. I do worry that recurring violence might become treated as normal rather than political failures that demand solutions. So yes, we are normalizing clinic insecurity.

[B]

I agree on that. I think we see that in drc. We're seeing it in the two tier Cabo del Ghetto in Northern Mozambique as well.

[A]

Next question. Are we better positioned today than a decade ago or simply more accustomed to living with these security threats?

[B]

I think we're slowly becoming worse positioned to address these. Yeah, I think because of the lack of coherence between regionally, between states, not so much the higher level international architecture, but I think there's still a lot of distrust between states in East Africa that hinders any progress. And I think that, yeah, we're maybe getting more used to living with them.

[C]

We're better positioned. I think we actually know far more than what we did. If we compare our strategies to a decade ago, we've generated tremendous knowledge, whether that is, you know, practitioners such as yourself, African scholars, civil society. For me, the challenge is translating that knowledge into policy. But I do think we're better positioned because we have more information.

[A]

So we've spoken about sort of the role of policymakers and what some policymakers might be missing in their approach. So what is one assumption? If you had the opportunity to advise policymakers, what is one assumption that you would advise policymakers to abandon immediately about the way they look at security threats on the continent?

[C]

Now, human security is a buzzword. It's actually real. Let's actually bring that into our strategy. It's not just a buzzword. I think that's one assumption that policymakers must abandon and actually take it very seriously if we're going to really, really adopt this whole of society approach.

[B]

And I think from my point of view, we need to abandon the lens of a transnational Islamist threat and focus much more on what's happening locally and how these conflicts are driven and addressed locally. I think certainly in Mozambique, I think even the insurgents themselves have that. And possibly people like myself using terms like Islamic State, Mozambique persistently might not always help.

[A]

Thank you both so much. So we have spent much of this conversation looking at adaptation, fragility and just limits of Our current response, even local response or global response. But I want to end our conversation today on a more personal note, because even in the midst of all of this, hope and imagination still matter. So, Jumo, let me start with you. Given everything that you study, what are you most hopeful for when it comes to Africa's security future? And a second part of this question. Is there a song or a book by an African artist or author that captures that hope for you and why?

[C]

Okay, this is good. It's a good way to close all of this. Okay. What gives me hope, and this goes back to what I first said at the beginning of our conversation, is African agency. That's what really gives me hope. And that's because across the continent, communities are not just waiting passively for solutions. We are seeing women mediating conflicts. We are seeing youths building resilience. We're seeing local leaders and civil society holding institutions accountable. I'm also encouraged by the willingness of African states to actually shape their own security agendas rather than simply adapting or adopting externally prescribed solutions. I know this is a little bit contentious when we think about great power competition, but I think it's a way of asserting African agency. For my song, I would be a little bit regular. I would choose Jerusalem. I don't know if you know the song. For me, Jerusalem embodies hope. I'm thinking about when it came out during the pandemic, and it became a celebration of connection, movement, possibility. And that is my hope for the African continent. When I think about agency, about something important of our future. Despite the challenges, the story of our continent is not just about insecurity. It's about creativity. It's about resilience and again, our hope.

[A]

Thank you, Juma.

[B]

Now, Peter, I think all of us come across people in conflict, ordinary people, public administrators, who humble us by the resilience they show and the conditions under which they have to work. But in terms of sort of one piece, what very quickly came to mind when I looked at my bookshelves was a novel from some years back by a Tanzanian author who I think lives in Switzerland or Germany, called Anna Mananza. The book is called Penzila Damo. At its heart, it's a love story through very beautiful language and writing, really. It's set in Tanga, on the east African coast, just across from Zanzibar, where you are Jumo, and subtly lets us know just how global people's lives are there. The story stretches as far as Burma. It has characters from Cabo del Gado who've got nothing to do with conflict. They're just migrant workers. And it really expresses to us how that part of the world is really part of an important part of global society that I think we can all learn from and to which we are connected.

[A]

Thank you so much, Peter and Jumo. That's a fitting place to end our conversation today on both realism and hope and just a remembrance that we're all connected. Even the fact that we're called today from all different locations. Jumo, you're in Tanzania. Peter, you're in Ireland and I'm in D.C. so we're all connected. But what today's conversation makes clear is that the threat landscape in Africa is evolving rapidly, but the responses to these threats are still uneven and in many cases are also narrow. So our hope is that policy becomes more adaptive. Unless policy becomes more adaptive, more politically grounded, and most importantly, to echo the points you made, Juma, about human security and also Peter as well, more people centered. We may not be resolving insecurity so much as just learning to live with it. So I want to thank you both today for a very rich and thought provoking discussion. And for our listeners, we thank you as well for listening to Into Africa. Thank you so much.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you, Oge. Thank you, Juma.

[A]

Thanks for listening to Into Africa. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. Wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find more analysis from the Africa program on our website, CSIS.org or find us on social media. Search for SISAfrica on X, LinkedIn and Instagram.