Africa Week in Review: 8/8/2014 Share This /

This week, President Obama welcomed African Heads of State for the U.S.- Africa Summit and announced a plan to send $550 million towards peacekeeping efforts in the continent. Read more about this story and other news highlights from the region below.

• During the third day of the U.S.-African leader Summit, President Obama announced a U.S. plan to spend $550 million over a period of 5 years to develop peacekeeping forces in Africa that can rapidly respond to immediate threats in the region. These forces will help build African capacity and would be deployed under the African Union or the United Nations.

• During his address to African civil society leaders at the U.S.-African Leaders Summit, Vice President Joe Biden urged them to fight for democracy in their countries. Vice President Biden also highlighted the need to combat corruption, declaring, “Widespread corruption is an affront to the dignity of its people, and a direct threat to each of your nations’ stability.”

• Amnesty International released gruesome footage appearing to implicate the Nigerian National Army and the Civil Joint Task Force (CJTF) in war crimes in their fight against the extremist group Boko Haram. The footage obtained from multiple sources and with several testimonies “includes horrific images of detainees having their throats slit one by one and dumped in mass graves.” Nigerian Senior officers and Forensics experts vowed to investigate the footage in order to “ascertain the veracity of the claims” and identify those responsible of acts.

• U.S. surveillance flights in the Northeast region of Nigeria have spotted what appeared to be a large group of girls in an open field. U.S. and Nigerian officials believe those girls might be the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in April. The U.S. has been carrying out one surveillance flight a day among other forms of assistance to support Nigeria’s efforts in rescuing the Chibok girls. 

• In a recent interview, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Amanda J. Dory commented on the nature of security assistance partnerships in Africa. Dory mentioned the U.S. commitment to helping Africa find African solutions to their security challenges stating, “The whole foundational concept of building partner capacity is really a win-win” and that the U.S. will not insist on a particular approach but rather offer expertise. 

• Russ Feingold, former Senator and current U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo warned FDLR, the Rwandan rebel group, to surrender by the end of the year or face “military actions.” The FDLR was formed by leaders of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and have been carrying out atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for the past two decades. Feingold stated that destabilizing the FDRL would bring the stability necessary to focus on strengthening the political system in Congo.