Islamic Violent Movements in Contemporary Africa

Contemporary Africa is a battleground of radical Islamic Violent Movements, which aim to impose their version of Islamic interpretation in many countries in Africa from North East Africa (Egypt) to the West reaching Burkina Faso.

In the Horn of Africa, the oldest and strongest movement is Al-Shabaab in Somalia which dates back to 2006 and now controls large part of Somalian territory. South East Africa - particularly the northern part of Mozambique - has been engulfed with radical Wahhabi group that became active in 2017, destabilizing the region internationally known as the Islamic State in Mozambique.

The hot core in West Africa has been Boko Haram, radical Islamic violent movement created in 2009 in Kanuri people’s homeland in Northeast Nigeria, gradually expanded to all territories where Kanuri people live; Cameroun, Chad and Niger. Other different groups in West Africa historically emanated from Boko Haram.

The purpose of this session is to analyse a long history of Islamic movements from historical sociological perspective, the root causes of contemporary violent Islamic movements, the economic situation of these areas in which poverty increases and lack of education prevails, international influence of Mujahideen (founded in July 1979, from which Al-Qaeda emerged) and finally Islamic State in Syria and Iraq as ideological motivation to try to unite all Muslims under one Islamic State. In conclusion, we want to illustrate economic, political, ideological and international aspects of the direst problem that Africa faces in the twenty first century.