The state of terrorism research in Africa
Emeka T Njoku2021, Critical Studies on Terrorism
https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2021.1983113visibility
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Following the terrorist bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Africa was immediately drawn into the global counter-terrorism efforts. Terrorism has spread throughout the continent since then, from Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, to Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) in the Lake Chad area. Central Africa is another epicentre of terrorism on the continent. Predictably, there has been an increase in terrorism and counter-terrorism research by both Africa-based and West-based scholars. Indeed, some researchers believe that the field is in its “golden age” (Silke and Schmidt-Petersen 2017, 9). However, Marc Sageman is sceptical; he highlights the absence of empirical data, weak methodologies, speculative studies and domination of the field by media experts. Sageman concludes that despite the rise in knowledge, terrorism studies are yet to be fully developed (Sageman 2014). This assertion is particularly validated by trends in terrorism research in Africa.
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This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Critical Studies
on Terrorism, 28:2, 285-303] on [21 September 2021], available online:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2021.1983113
The State of Terrorism Research in Africa
Emeka Thaddues Njoku
Newton International Fellow, International Development Department,
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Following the terrorist bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998
and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Africa was immediately drawn into
the global efforts for counter-terrorism. Terrorism has spread throughout the continent
since then, from Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda,
to Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) in the Lake
Chad area. Central Africa is another epicentre of terrorism in the continent.
Expectedly, there has been an increase in terrorism and counter-terrorism research by
both Africa-based and West-based scholars. Indeed, some researchers believe that the
field is in its “golden age” (Silke & Schmidt-Petersen 2017, 9). However, Marc
Sageman is sceptical; he highlights the absence of empirical data, weak
methodologies, speculative studies and domination of the field by media experts.
Sageman concludes that, despite the rise in knowledge, terrorism study is yet to be
fully developed (Sageman, 2014). This assertion is particularly validated by trends in
terrorism research in Africa.
Evidently, terrorism studies in Africa have provided insights into the emergence of
terrorist organisations, their operationality and, their adverse socio-political and
economic impacts. However, many of these works have focused on the same
conversations for years. Many papers produced on terrorist groups are uncritical and
ahistorical regurgitations and, they are based mainly on secondary sources (Smith,
2018; Solomon, 2015). The field has also been inundated with politicians, pro-state
academics or ‘friendly agents’, and social media influencers (Personal Interview,
2021). These groups are drowning critical voices, especially the voices of Africabased scholars who have devoted years to the study of terrorism.
Arguably, the silencing of African scholars is rooted in the paradox that led to the
discursive institution of a dominant global terrorism debate between the pre-9/11
periods, which culminated in the 1998 Al Qaeda bombing in Kenya and Tanzania,
and the post-9/11 years. In the pre-9/11 years, few critical voices had traced the roots
of terrorist violence to the Western foreign policies in Africa and the Middle East
region, particularly that of the US. Notably, during the Cold War, the US was claimed
to have funded the Mujahedeen to conduct a proxy war in Muslim nations to counter
the Soviet’s influence in the region. While this contributed to the rise of terrorism, the
backing of Israel by the US and the latter’s attitude to the Palestinian question and
war against the Taliban in Afghanistan effectively led terrorist organisations in the
area to turn against it (Mamdani, 2004; Enweramdu & Njoku, 2012; Obwogo, 1999;
Cooley, 1999). Despite these pre-9/11 conditions, the framing of 9/11 as a "temporal
rupture," an age of "radical insecurity," and the antecedents of imminent attacks
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Critical Studies
on Terrorism, 28:2, 285-303] on [21 September 2021], available online:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2021.1983113
created a situation in which discussions on the Western and US roles in the rise of
terrorism in Africa and the MENA area were overrun (Jarvis, 2008, 245, 247).
Specifically, 9/11 was framed as unprecedented while Africa was represented as the
epicentre of an impending era of great insecurity. This is evident in Susan Rice's
comments that Africa is the "soft underbelly for global terrorism" and a "veritable
incubator for terrorism's foot soldiers"(Smith, 2018, 390). Consequently, Africa was
securitised, and African governments and, African domestic and international
organisations, were politically and economically mobilised for the War on Terrorism
(WoT). The 9/11 temporal narrative and the WoT, on the other hand, became pretexts
for African governments to enact terrorism laws that glossed over human rights and
civil liberties by repressing credible oppositions and civil societies and muzzling other
critical voices (Njoku, 2020). Consequently, the temporal turn that the 9/11 discourse
enshrined also canonised the exceptionality of the attack and effectively rationalised
violent retaliation, suppression and punishment of critical voices (Toros, 2017). It also
shifted attention away from the West's involvement in the growth of terrorism in
Africa.
I argue that the epochal enthroning of 9/11 made the reading of terrorism in Africa
among African-based researchers increasingly ahistorical and uncritical. Indeed,
African-based voices have contributed to state-centred and state-controlled
scholarship in terrorism studies. Critical engagements and research are few, and the
prevalent information about Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISWAP is yet to
move beyond centring the state and its security agenda. Bart Schuurman underscores
the state-centric nature of terrorism studies in a review of 3,442 terrorism articles
published between 2007 and 2016 (Schuurman 2019). Arguably, state actors in Africa
have often directed or dictated the tone of terrorism research by engaging various
individuals in seminars, symposiums and workshops on security or terrorism. Most
discourses emanating from such are largely self-congratulatory or, at best, reiterating
what is already known. Debates revealing how state actors’ use the language of
terrorism to close civic spaces are few (Njoku, 2020, 2021). Because
these identifiable gaps are ignored, questionable counter-terrorism approaches are
spreading, sometimes with the implication that the government is inadvertently
furthering terrorists' goals.
In advancing the field, Africa-based researchers must engage the requisite issues with
critical lenses. Additionally, the silencing of African scholarly voices by Western
hegemonies which operate as gatekeepers on terrorism studies must be confronted. A
careful observer would note only a few non-Western members exist in the editorial
boards of the five leading terrorism journals – Studies in Conflict and Terrorism,
Terrorism and Political Violence, Perspective of Terrorism, Critical Studies on
Terrorism and Journal of De-radicalisation. This is despite the fact that, in recent
years, many of the works produced about terrorism in Africa and the MENA region
have appeared in these journals. This suggests that the Africans in the field must
engage in the decolonisation of both knowledge (Mitova, 2020) and terrorism studies
(Mohammed, 2021).
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Critical Studies
on Terrorism, 28:2, 285-303] on [21 September 2021], available online:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2021.1983113
Through public debates, African-based researchers must resist certain Western voices
on terrorism that discursively normalise improprieties on the continent. This is
exigent in the light of recent allegations of states’ possible complicity in the
protraction of terrorism. A Nigerian Minister of Information and Communication
Technology was asked to resign his post because of his documented support of Al
Qaeda (The Guardian, 2021). Some Western scholars questioned the rationale for
labelling the minister a terrorist since he had supported efforts in defeating Boko
Haram and ISWAP (Daily Trust, 2021). The question, then, is, would someone who
had pledged support for Al Qaeda in the past be made a minister in the US or UK?
How are practices that the states of the West take as dreadful cynically get framed as
normal and appropriate for Africa?
In conclusion, while scholars have advanced our understanding of terrorists and the
impacts of their activities, the field needs to move beyond flogged issues and the
centring of state security agendas. Africa-based scholars must get involved in the
adoption of critical approaches to articulate new questions and, produce concepts and
methodological designs in terrorism studies. They should assert their voices in public
debates towards decolonising the field.
References
Cooley, J.K. 1999. Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism,
London: Pluto Press
Daily Trust, 2021. Minister Pantami’s Case and the War on Terror Witch-hunt in
Nigeria. https://dailytrust.com/minister-pantamis-case-and-the-war-onterrorwitchhunt-in-nigeria (12/05/2021)
Enweremadu, D. & Njoku, E.T. 2012. Religious Extremism and the Boko Haram
Phenomenon. Ibadan Journal of the Social Sciences 15 (1): 56-69
Jarvis, L. 2008. Times of Terror: writing temporality into the War on Terror.
Critical Studies on Terrorism 1 (2): 245-262.
Interview: Senior Counter-terrorism Research Officer in the Nigerian Military
(06/9/2021).
Mamdani, M. 2004. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the
Roots of Terror. Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series.
Mitova, V. 2020. Decolonising Knowledge Here and Now. Philosophical Papers 49
(2): 191-212.
Mohammed, I. 2021. Decolonising Terrorism Journals. Societies, 11, 6 (2021).
Njoku, E. T. 2020. Politics of conviviality? State-civil Society Relations within the
Context of Counter-terrorism in Nigeria. VOLUNTAS 31 (5): 1063–1076.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Critical Studies
on Terrorism, 28:2, 285-303] on [21 September 2021], available online:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2021.1983113
Njoku, E. T. 2021. Strategic Exclusion: The State and the Framing of a Service
Delivery Role for Civil Society Organisations in the Context of Counterterrorism in Nigeria. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 44 (5):410– 430.
Obwogo, S. 1999. The Bombs that Shook Nairobi and Dar: A Story of Pain and
Betrayal. Nairobi: Obwogo and Family Publishers.
Sageman, M. 2014. The Stagnation in Terrorism Research. Terrorism and Political
Violence 26 (4): 565–580.
Silke, A. & Schmidt-Petersen, J. 2017.The Golden Age? What the 100 Most Cited
Articles in Terrorism Studies Tell Us. Terrorism and Political Violence 29
(4): 692–712.
Smith, M. S. 2018. Africa, 9/11, and the Temporality and Spatiality of Race and
Terror, in Perera, S. and Razack, S. (eds.), At the Limits of Justice: Women
of Colour on Terror. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Solomon, H. 2015. Critical Terrorism Studies and its Implications for Africa.
Politikon 42 (2): 219-234.
Schuurman, B. 2019. Topics in Terrorism Research: Reviewing Trends and
Gaps, 2007-2016. Critical Studies on Terrorism 12 (3): 463-480.
The Guardian, 2021. #PantamiResignNow: Calls for Nigerian Minister to resign
over Extremist Views Grow. https://guardian.ng/news/pantamiresignnowcalls-for-nigerian-minister-to-resign-over-extremist-viewsgrow/ (12/05/2021).
Toros, H. 2017. ‘9/11 is alive and well’ or how Critical Terrorism Studies has
Sustained the 9/11 Narrative. Critical Studies on Terrorism 10 (2):203-219
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