War / Africa
Sudan Civil War
Sudan's war regionalizes as basing-for-weapons deals deepen and RSF arms bleed into South Sudan.
Northern Mozambique
The Mozambique Insurgency began in October 2017, when Ansar al-Sunna Wa-Jama'a, a local Islamist group known as Al-Shabaab, attacked police stations in Cabo Delgado, the country's poorest province and the site of $20 billion in newly discovered offshore gas.
The grievance was local: Muslim communities excluded from a gas boom on their own land. By 2019 the group had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and by 2021 it had seized a strategic port and driven TotalEnergies out of its flagship LNG project. Rwanda sent 3,000 troops to retake the ground the Mozambican army could not hold, and stayed.
The country that secures the gas fields is not the one that owns them.
EIM is conducting coordinated land assaults, mortar strikes, and coastal hijackings simultaneously while openly declaring caliphate intent and documenting executions for propaganda, marking a qualitative shift from insurgent disruption toward parallel governance ambition now extending into Nampula Province.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Africa.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Rwanda's coercive leverage is now structurally entrenched: with RDF at approximately 5,000 troops, SAMIM withdrawn, and Operation Copper expired without renewal, Maputo has no viable substitute security partner.
EIM's public caliphate framing, documented propaganda campaigns, and geographic expansion into Nampula Province mark a qualitative shift from insurgent disruption toward parallel governance ambition.
ISIS's systematic migration to AI-generated media, encrypted recruitment pipelines, and blockchain-based distribution is compressing radicalization timelines and expanding EIM's affiliate reach in ways that RDF ground.
PRO-GOVERNMENT
PRO-INSURGENCY
War / Africa
Sudan's war regionalizes as basing-for-weapons deals deepen and RSF arms bleed into South Sudan.
War / Africa
Ethiopia's multi-front war deepens as Fano consolidates, Tigray ceasefire collapses, and the Egypt-Eritrea axis hardens into operational infrastructure.
Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) deploys approximately 5,000 troops across five northern districts of Cabo Delgado.
RPF-linked commercial firms embed Rwandan economic interests in LNG concession zones.
Ansar al-Sunna Wa-Jama'a / Islamic State Mozambique Province (EIM) is the primary insurgent node, conducting coordinated land attacks, mortar strikes.
Islamic State Sahel Province functions as a transnational hub routing foreign fighters and diffusing tactics to EIM across the broader IS affiliate network.
ISIS-Somalia operates as a parallel tactics-diffusion and revenue node.