Africa Center for Strategic Studies

🔦 Éclairage : Les drones dans l’océan Indien occidental obligent à s’adapter en matière de sécurité maritime

La prolifération des drones renforce les capacités de surveillance maritime tout en permettant à des acteurs malveillants de perturber le transport maritime mondial, mettant ainsi en évidence une faille critique dans l'architecture de la sécurité maritime.

Éthiopie : Élargir la représentation tout en gérant les forces centrifuges

Les premières élections nationales depuis la fin du conflit dévastateur avec le Tigré en 2022, qui a coûté la vie à des centaines de milliers de personnes auront lieu en Éthiopie. Cette situation, conjuguée à l’expérience limitée de l’Éthiopie en matière d’élections compétitives, souligne l’importance – et les défis considérables que cela représente – pour ce pays de 130 millions d’habitants d’organiser des élections en 2026.

Les tensions persistantes autour du Tigré et les affrontements entre les forces fédérales et d’autres groupes séparatistes armés à caractère ethnique dans les régions d’Amhara et d’Oromia rendent le climat électoral encore plus tendu. L’une des principales priorités des élections sera donc d’assurer la sécurité pour permettre le vote (et l’inscription sur les listes électorales) dans le plus grand nombre possible de régions du pays.

https://africacenter.org/fr/spotlight/fr-elections-2026/ethiopia/

Ethiopians head to the polls on June 1.

These elections will be the first at the national level since the end of the devastating conflict with Tigray in 2022, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This, along with Ethiopia’s limited legacy of competitive elections, underscores the importance—and daunting challenges involved—of this country of 130 million people holding elections in 2026.

Ongoing frictions surrounding Tigray and clashes between federal forces and other armed, ethnically based separatist groups in Amhara and Oromia make the electoral environment even more fraught. A central priority for the elections, therefore, will be how to ensure security to enable voting (and enfranchisement) in as much of the country as possible.

Read more about the election in our election preview. Link in the comments.

INFOGRAPHIE : Le stratagème trompeur de la Russie pour recruter des soldats piège des milliers de jeunes Africains

La conscription trompeuse d'Africains par la Russie pour sa guerre en Ukraine met au jour un vaste réseau de traite d'êtres humains, de coercition et d'ingérence étrangère qui exploite des demandeurs d'emploi vulnérables.

https://africacenter.org/fr/spotlight/stratageme-trompeur-russie-pour-recruter-piege-africains/

On May 25th, the African Union celebrated Africa Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Founded in 1963, this predecessor to the African Union (AU) had two central missions: defend the independence of new states and coordinate the total decolonization of Africa by providing military support to over two dozen armed movements.

Among other achievements, the OAU gave decisive leadership on conflict resolution in countries emerging from colonialism and apartheid, kept the public informed through its own news agencies, and mobilized international public engagement.

Today, the AU faces significant organizational challenges, but it plays a crucial role both on the continent and the international stage. With reform, it has potential to become an even more influential institution as envisioned by the African leaders who founded the OAU.

Read more about the OAU, AU, and calls for institutional reform on our website. Link in the comments.

5 Facts to Know: Russia’s Deceptive War Recruitment of Africans

1️⃣ A systematic, state-backed trafficking pipeline ⚙️ Russia has built an extensive recruitment network involving its Federal Security Service (FSB) that funnels thousands of young Africans from an estimated 45 countries into military front lines and hazardous drone factories under false pretenses.

2️⃣ Driven by severe battlefield shortages 📊 To offset an estimated 1.2 million casualties since attacking Ukraine in 2022, Moscow targets African job seekers to generate 30,000–35,000 new monthly recruits and avoid a politically risky domestic mobilization.

3️⃣ Deceptive bait-and-switch tactics 🔍 Posing as legitimate "work abroad" agencies, criminal syndicates have lured victims with promises of high-paying civilian jobs or study programs, only to confiscate their passports and force them to sign Cyrillic military contracts upon arrival.

4️⃣ High mortality in expendable roles ⚠️ Used effectively as "cannon fodder" in high-risk attrition assaults with little training or equipment, conscripted Africans face severe physical abuse and a confirmed 22-percent fatality rate in a leaked database, with some reports showing 42 percent die within four months.

5️⃣ Rising African demands for accountability 🪧 Exposing a complex nexus of human trafficking, disinformation, and foreign interference, African governments, families of victims, civil society are calling for accountability and coordinated regional responses to counter these schemes.

What first looked like isolated cases of recruitment scams of Africans has now been exposed as an extensive and systematic effort involving Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the government’s principal intelligence agency. A leaked Russian database of African recruits from 2023 to 2025 illustrates a deliberate strategy to generate assault manpower for Russia’s war.

Estimates are that more than 1,700 Africans from 36 countries are currently fighting for Russia. This figure may represent only a fraction of the total number of Africans recruited by Russia, however. A Kenyan intelligence report presented to Parliament showed over 1,000 Kenyans had been recruited—a figure that is 2,100 percent higher than the number of Kenyans in the leaked database.

Testimonies from returnees describe amputations, severe maiming, untreated trauma, confiscated documents, withheld pay, and an ultimatum in which recruits were told to sign and fight or face death.

Read more in our new Spotlight.

“He didn’t know it was a job on the front line. Otherwise, I would never have allowed him to go. He’s my only boy.”

Through a shadowy network of online recruiters, Russia has quietly assembled a pipeline funneling thousands of Africans from nearly every country on the continent into the front lines and factories supporting Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.

The Majority Leader of the Kenya National Assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah, has testified that once they arrive in Russia, these recruits are “basically just given a gun to go and die.”

Read our compilation detailing this pattern of human trafficking:

5 Facts to Know: Russia’s Deceptive War Recruitment of Africans

1️⃣ A systematic, state-backed trafficking pipeline ⚙️ Russia has built an extensive recruitment network involving its Federal Security Service (FSB) that funnels thousands of young Africans from an estimated 45 countries into military front lines and hazardous drone factories under false pretenses.

2️⃣ Driven by severe battlefield shortages 📊 To offset an estimated 1.2 million casualties since attacking Ukraine in 2022, Moscow targets African job seekers to generate 30,000–35,000 new monthly recruits and avoid a politically risky domestic mobilization.

3️⃣ Deceptive bait-and-switch tactics 🔍 Posing as legitimate "work/study abroad" agencies, criminal syndicates have lured victims with promises of high-paying civilian jobs or study programs, only to confiscate their passports and force them to sign Cyrillic military contracts upon arrival.

4️⃣ High mortality in expendable roles ⚠️ Used effectively as "cannon fodder" in high-risk attrition assaults with little training or equipment, conscripted Africans face severe physical abuse and a confirmed 22-percent fatality rate in a leaked database, with some reports showing 42 percent die within four months.

5️⃣ Rising African demands for accountability 🤝 Exposing a complex nexus of human trafficking, disinformation, and foreign interference, African governments, families of victims, civil society are calling for accountability and coordinated regional responses to counter these schemes.

Maritime access is increasingly exercised indirectly through disruption, risk imposition, and remote targeting rather than continuous territorial presence.

The growing access to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) is transforming maritime security across East Africa’s coastal regions.

The WIO is a strategically vital network of maritime corridors connecting global trade through chokepoints such as the Bab al Mandeb Strait, the Mozambique Channel, and routes around the Cape of Good Hope. These corridors collectively facilitate roughly a quarter of global maritime traffic, making the region a central transport hub for the global economy.

With the growing accessibility of drone technologies, the WIO is characterized by enhanced visibility to counter the persistent threats, though with constrained enforcement and significant gaps in legal outcomes.

In this chart, we take a look at the UAV-enabled maritime threats across four regions. Read more about the specific dynamics in the Western Indian Ocean in our new Spotlight.