Kenya is calling for more African-owned strategies to neutralize the growing geographic concentration of terrorism along the continent’s national borders.
Interior Principal Secretary Dr Raymond Omollo said that extremist groups have turned Africa’s very geography into a potent weapon.
With violent extremist fatalities rising in border-adjacent regions, the country is nudging its regional and international partners into adopting contextualised, innovative, and sustainable approaches to suppress the upsurge in terrorist activity across Africa’s borderlands.
Omollo, who delivered Kenya’s message during the official opening of the Fourth Nairobi Caucus on Border Security and Counter-Terrorism, emphasized the urgent need to reimagine borders as opportunities for integration rather than vulnerabilities.
“It is no longer a secret that a majority of these groups in Africa operate in and around national borders, where various vulnerabilities create conditions that facilitate their emergence and survival. These groups seem to have weaponised our borders against us,” Dr. Omollo warned.
According to official reports, more than 80 percent of violent extremist fatalities recorded across the continent in 2024 occurred in communities near national frontiers.
In West Africa, recorded terrorist attacks within 50 kilometres of coastal borders surged from just 50 incidents in 2020 to over 500 in 2024.
On the Indian Ocean littoral, maritime trafficking linked to terrorist networks increased by 25 percent in the past year alone.
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