Africa remains the Islamic State’s primary global theatre of operations, surpassing the Middle East and Asia in attack volume and organisational strength, underscoring the critical need for vigilance among security and policy leaders to address this evolving threat, which now represents the central focus of Islamic State activities worldwide.
📌 Inside this Assessment
Overview and Security Threat Assessment
Activity and Operations Analysis — September 2026
Number, Targets, and Areas of Attacks in September 2026
Charts and Statistics
Analytical and Intelligence Assessments
Implications for Decision Makers
Early Warning Indicators
Threat Forecast, 30 to 90 Days
Executive Intelligence Conclusion and Risk and Threat Overview.
Scope and Methodology
This Strategic Threat Outlook is based on: systematic monitoring of Islamic State propaganda (videos, photos, statements, claims); reporting from sources in the field;
While integrating OSINT, SOCMINT, IMINT, and Digital HUMINT enhances intelligence breadth, it is crucial to acknowledge their respective reliability, sources-including primary Islamic State media channels and local reports-and limitations to ensure accurate threat assessments.
Sources include primary Islamic State media channels, open-source reporting, official statements, and local sources across affected regions.
Limitations
Incomplete or delayed reporting from conflict zones;
Exaggeration or omission in group claims;
Propaganda bias and potential disinformation.
Where verification is not possible, this is explicitly noted.
Related Intelligence & Analysis:
Provincial Snapshots
Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)
Islamic State Sahel Province
Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP)
Islamic State Somalia Province
Islamic State Mozambique Province (ISM)
Overview – Islamic State in Africa
The Islamic State’s presence in Africa is resilient and adaptive, demonstrating high operational continuity despite counterterrorism efforts, reinforcing the importance of sustained strategic focus for security officials to counter this persistent threat. This resilience should reassure the audience that continued vigilance and strategic adaptation are necessary.
In Africa, IS affiliates demonstrate high operational continuity, executing attacks with diverse tactics like assaults, ambushes, kidnappings, and terror campaigns, especially against Christian communities, in recent months.
The epicentre of this dynamic remains sub-Saharan and central-eastern Africa, with particularly worrying developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, where IS affiliates have demonstrated not only a capacity for sustained violence, but also a growing level of coordination, intermittent territorial control, and integration with local criminal economies. In such contexts, violence is not episodic but part of a strategy of progressive erosion of state authority, exploiting structural fragility, socio-economic marginalisation, inter-community conflicts, and governance vacuums.
On March 20, 2025, the Islamic State officially announced the launch of a new military campaign, called “Burning Camps,” with a stated focus primarily on Africa. This campaign’s implications include heightened regional instability, increased displacement, and the need for enhanced security cooperation among affected nations to counteract these threats.
The strategy remains consistent with the Islamic State’s operating model: creating chronic instability, delegitimising the state, presenting itself as an alternative (or inevitable) actor, and exploiting chaos to facilitate recruitment, logistical support, and territorial entrenchment. In this sense, IS does not aim exclusively at permanent territorial conquest but at fluid, opportunistic control sufficient to maintain freedom of manoeuvre and offensive capability.
Currently, the Islamic State is actively and continuously operating in at least eight African countries, with monthly variations in geographical distribution and intensity of activities. During the period under review, the organisation focused its efforts on fewer theatres without reducing overall capacity, indicating a decentralised yet functional structure.
Every significant attack has been followed by intense media activity, with the Islamic State disseminating a significant volume of content through its central channels, notably Amaq and al-Naba, constructing a narrative of success and resilience aimed at both local supporters and a global jihadist audience, which underscores the importance of monitoring propaganda for threat assessment.
In summary, the African picture shows an Islamic State that is not in decline but in a phase of adaptive consolidation, capable of absorbing losses, reorienting priorities, and exploiting the structural weaknesses of local contexts. For intelligence, security, and political and military decision-makers, Africa is not a secondary front but the current centre of gravity of the threat posed by the Islamic State, emphasising the need for sustained vigilance and strategic response.
Developments between January and August 2026 reinforced Africa’s centrality within the Islamic State’s operational system, while revealing increasingly uneven trajectories across its branches. ISWAP maintained pressure on military positions and auxiliary forces in northeastern Nigeria. At the same time, ISCAP’s activity beyond its established North Kivu and Ituri strongholds widened the area exposed to civilian coercion and dispersed insurgent violence. In Mozambique, military pressure disrupted militant concentrations but also contributed to movements toward southern and western operating areas, extending insecurity around rural communities, roads and economic assets. Alongside these developments, central propaganda increasingly presented African operations as evidence of organisational vitality and as a source of ideological mobilisation for wider jihadist audiences. However, media prominence alone does not establish recruitment gains or closer operational coordination between provinces. By August, the decline in recorded attacks indicated a lower aggregate tempo, while continued activity across several theatres suggested that military disruption had not translated into uniform organisational degradation, leaving the preservation of mobility, support networks and local access central to the assessment of subsequent developments.
Activity and Operations Analysis — September 2026
During September 2026, Islamic State activity across Africa reflected different responses to military pressure and local security conditions, with continued attacks on state forces in northeastern Nigeria, persistent civilian exposure in eastern Congo and a widening interaction between militant mobility, abductions and economic insecurity in northern Mozambique. These developments require a differentiated assessment, particularly where the disruption of established positions has been followed by continued activity elsewhere.
