20.6
What Is the Root Causes of the Rise of Jihadist Movements in Africa?
African continent is the home of Indigenous African religion and other Middle East originated international religions of Christianity and Islam from the very beginnings of their origin until today. These religions existed relatively in peace with each other for many centuries side by side.
Contemporary Africa faced Islamic sectarian violent conflicts in many countries of the continent. Starting from the eastern coast of the continent, al-Shabab in Somalia starting from 2006 until today controlling vast part of the country, in the north of the continent the Egyptian Islamic jihad, The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (IQIM), Ansar al-Dine in Mali, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) in Southern Algeria& Mali. The strongest from all these groups is Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria.
The paper examines the internal problems of these countries from the economic, social and political point view, such as unemployment, lack of enough practical education, corruption of political elite and the security forces uninterested to solve these sectarian violent conflicts in peace negotiation, because of their interest to have more budget for the army which gives advantage for higher officers to siphon the money for themselves.
We also elucidate the external influence of western states such as USA, Great Britain and France in influencing the violent conflict in Africa for their geo-strategic interests for Africa’s precious natural resources and to expand their military bases in Africa in the name of fighting against the so called global terrorism. We also discuss the ideological inspiration of these groups which emanated from Taliban and Al-Qaeda.