UMVA has learned that the commander of U.S. Africa Command warned Congress that Africa has become a cash‑flow engine for Russia’s war machine, while a shrinking American footprint is creating a massive intelligence void across the continent.
Gen. Dagvin Anderson told the House Armed Services Committee that Russia, China and terrorist networks are racing to fill the vacuum left by U.S. and allied drawdowns, eroding America’s ability to spot and stop emerging threats.
He painted Africa as the new epicenter of global terrorism, noting that ISIS leadership now resides on the continent and al Qaeda affiliates are poised to seize territory and destabilize governments.
“With a 75 % reduction in our regional posture over the past decade, compounded by the pull‑back of our allies, we are staring at an intelligence black hole,” Anderson warned, adding that dwindling presence has eroded long‑term trust and crippled crisis response.
The testimony highlighted how adversaries exploit the same governance voids, using Africa’s instability to extract resources—and even human lives—to fuel their ambitions.
Russia, cloaking its expansion in a façade of security cooperation, has deployed the Kremlin‑controlled Africa Corps, the successor to the Wagner Group, to fill gaps abandoned by Western and French forces in Mali, Niger and beyond.
Lawmakers pressed Anderson on reports that Russia has lured thousands of African nationals with false promises of jobs, then shipped them to fight in Ukraine, with estimates of up to a thousand Kenyan recruits already on the front lines.
“It is disturbing how many Africans are being recruited by Russia to fight in Ukraine,” Anderson said, underscoring the human cost of Moscow’s recruitment pipelines.
He warned that terrorist groups are capitalizing on weakened governance, especially in the Sahel, where ISIS and al Qaeda are consolidating power.
“Today, the epicenter of global terrorism is in Africa,” he declared, noting that both groups harbor the intent to strike the United States homeland.
Al Qaeda affiliates are now capable of controlling whole cities, a development Anderson said could give them the trappings of a nascent nation‑state.
China was also singled out as viewing Africa as a “second continent,” aggressively pursuing critical minerals, infrastructure and transport networks to secure cobalt, lithium, copper and rare‑earth elements vital for advanced defense systems and batteries.
The combined pressure from Moscow’s resource grabs, Beijing’s mineral rush and the surge of extremist groups threatens to reshape Africa into a battlefield of competing great‑power ambitions, leaving the United States scrambling to fill the void it helped create.
