The Effect of Terrorism and Insurgency on the Security of African Nations: An Appraisal

Abstract

Recently, Africa has been labeled a theatre of war due to incessant terrorist attacks that plagued its landscape. This situation, among others, explains why the continent's development has been slow or stagnated in all spheres, and Africa has been accorded little recognition in the international arena. Against this background, this paper examined the effects of terrorism on the security of African nations. The descriptive method was adopted, and a secondary source of data collection was used in sourcing relevant data. At the same time, content analysis was utilized as a framework for analyzing the data. The paper revealed that though terrorism and insurgency have been issues rooted in history, they have recently become serious challenges to the security of African nations, impacting negatively on African nations and their development. The paper posited that religious prejudice, deprivations, and the feeling of neglect are the underlying factors breeding terrorism and insurgency in Africa. It further averred that though a lot of combative efforts have been made to checkmate the trend of these phenomena in Africa, such have, however, achieved limited success. It is due to a combination of factors ranging from weak leadership to confronting the phenomena, corruption, and the porosity of national borders, which encouraged illegal migration of people that form the core of terrorists'/insurgents militia, and accentuated arms proliferation, among others. The paper is a modest effort in order to arrest this unpleasant situation and extreme religious radicalism, which should be timely nipped in the mud. The security architecture of African nations needs to be re-engineered and directed towards generating employment opportunities for their increasing youth population. Also, collaboration in intelligence gathering and information sharing should be encouraged among African nations to ensure early response to such challenges.