US President Donald Trump’s recently announced new counter-terrorism strategy for Africa marks a departure from a policy of long-term troop deployments and wider governance building to tackle terrorist groups, in favour of short-term campaigns and cooperation with local authorities.
In so doing, the strategy looks to a more surgical approach to counter terrorism worldwide, away from the more long-term nation-building and interventionist policy of the past, to one in which US troop deployments will be set against definite timelines and targets, to campaigns intended to eliminate threats and withdraw.
In President Trump’s words, the policy marks “a return to commonsense and peace through strength”, rebuilding bilateral counter-terrorism relations with African governments.
“In Africa, we have two clear goals”, the new strategy states. “One goal is to ensure no Jihadist groups can establish bases of operation enabling them to plot and execute attacks against the United States or any US interests globally”, and the second is to protect Christians from attack by Jihadist groups. The strategy also expands the definition of ‘terror merchants’ to include drug cartels, left-wing ‘anarchists.’
The US has directed its anti-terror operations in Africa mainly through the US Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany, from which it has supported African Union forces in Somalia in collaboration with military forces from Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti through aerial raids supporting ground operations against al-Shabaab.
Officials from the US State Department have recently indicated that they are also collaborating with Sahelian countries Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, who have been at the ‘epicentre’ of extremist violence in the African continent.
Meanwhile, a recent surge of violence involving Russian mercenaries has led to a renewal of ties with Washington. ‘Warming’ US relations have also been developing with Eritrea, a country holding a strategic position in the Horn of Africa.
“We will continue to work together with governments threatened by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates who threaten us as well”, the strategy states, “and assist them with actionable intelligence and CT partner-force development until our shared foes no longer pose a serious threat to either them or us.”
Outside the African continent, the US policy accuses China, Russia and Iran of “sponsoring terrorism’ by aiding and abetting extremist groups to acquire arms.
In November 2025, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu declared a “nationwide security emergency” as the country scrambled to respond to a wave of mass kidnappings, which saw hundreds of schoolchildren taken captive in just one week.
In February of this year, President Tinubu deployed an army battalion to the Kaiama district in Nigeria’s Kwara State after what was thought to be jihadist fighters killed 170 people in an attack on Woro village on the border with Niger.
On March 17, triple suicide bombers, believed to be Boko Haram militants, killed 23 people and wounded more than 100 in an attack on a busy market in the city of Maiduguri.
Boko Haram and rival jihadist group Islamic State West Africa have recently escalated attacks in northeastern Nigeria. Their campaign is believed to have killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million.
In February, The Economist reported that America had dispatched a team to Nigeria to help with counterterrorism.
In the last week, Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, undertook a three-day working visit to the United States, meeting with what were described as ‘senior figures of the US government’, including US Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The official communique said that the “meetings provided an opportunity for both sides to review the current state of Nigeria-United States relations and to further strengthen ongoing collaboration in counterterrorism, defence cooperation, intelligence sharing, regional security, economic resilience and democratic governance”.
Following the meetings, Ribadu emphasised the importance of sustained cooperation with the US and international partners in addressing security challenges confronting West Africa and the broader Sahel region.
Martin Minns is the executive producer of Panel 54, a pan-African podcast
