Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Analysts raise questions about the official White House narrative behind recent U.S. strikes on Nigeria, Benin holds elections after a failed coup attempt, and China’s foreign minister tours the continent.
Nigeria, like Iran and Venezuela, has become a target of the United States’ increasingly aggressive foreign policy under President Donald Trump. The U.S. military launched airstrikes on northwestern Nigeria’s Sokoto state on Christmas Day, claiming that it was protecting Christians from what Trump called “ISIS Terrorist Scum.”
Last week, Trump told the New York Times that further airstrikes in Nigeria were on the table. “I’d love to make it a one-time strike. But if they continue to kill Christians, it will be a many-time strike,” Trump said. Washington alleges that Nigerian Christians are facing systematic persecution and killings compared to other Nigerians, an assertion that is not supported by data.
Expert analyses, media reports, and eyewitness accounts contest the White House’s official narrative surrounding the Dec. 25, 2025, strikes. Even as U.S. Africa Command released a statement that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the ISIS camps,” residents of Muslim-majority Sokoto said a large number of the missiles hit empty farms.
An aide to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu called the U.S. claims “sketchy,” telling Sky News that the U.S. attacks hit an emerging jihadi group named Lakurawa, whose links to the Islamic State are disputed by some analysts. Lakurawa fighters are currently incapable of carrying out large-scale attacks compared to Nigerian Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates, experts told Foreign Policy.
Analysts say that the strikes on Lakurawa made little sense, given that there are deadlier groups operating in northeast Nigeria. They include the United Nations-sanctioned Ansaru, an al Qaeda affiliate that splintered from Boko Haram around 2012. Former Nigerian Senate majority leader Ali Ndume welcomed the strikes but called for their extension to the “exclusive strongholds” of the Islamic State and Boko Haram in the country’s northeast.
“Lakurawa are way below in terms of importance when you are speaking of terrorists in Nigeria. … It’s a little bit confusing as to why the [United States] did this,” said Kabir Adamu, the CEO of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence.
What’s more, the U.S. strikes appear to have been ineffective. “There’s no evidence that any member of Lakurawa were killed in the airstrikes based on discussions with community members and experts,” said Kingsley Madueke, the Nigeria research coordinator for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Madueke’s claims were supported by Ladd Serwat, the senior analyst for Africa at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). “We’ve combed through the available reports … and we also don’t have any verifiable casualties,” he said.
Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Guinea targeted Lakurawa’s camps in the Tangaza forest, located on the border with Niger. Unexploded missiles fell onto buildings and farms in the town of Jabo and 280 miles away in the southwestern town of Offa, two areas without terrorist activities, according to Adamu.
Residents in Tangaza reported seeing a few Lakurawa fighters fleeing the area on motorbikes after observing U.S. surveillance flights hours before the strikes. Satellite imagery as well as international and Nigerian media reports showed that some explosives landed in empty fields.
Lakurawa emerged around 2010, when some Muslim communities invited them to help protect against other criminal gangs and cattle rustlers. The group later turned on the local communities that it was hired to protect, taking hostages and imposing taxes and radical Islamist rules on villagers. Lakurawa’s numbers are unknown, but analysts including Madueke estimate that it includes around 200 fighters. Its members come from bordering Mali and Niger as well as Nigeria.
In the wake of the attack, security analysts monitoring armed groups in Nigeria are concerned that extremists could exploit Trump’s belligerent rhetoric for recruitment propaganda.
“The framing of the U.S. airstrikes as a move to protect Christians is counterproductive,” said Madueke, adding that Sokoto’s population is predominantly Muslim “There’s a lot of suspicion in northern Nigeria against Western countries, and any operation has to really take that into consideration,” he said.
Right-wing U.S. politicians have cited figures claiming that more than 100,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009. But ACLED data disputes these numbers. According to the group, a little more than 54,000 civilians of all religions have been killed by armed groups in the country since 2009.
“ACLED records between 50 and 90 incidents per year involving violence targeting Christians in Nigeria, resulting in just over 500 fatalities over the past five years,” Serwat said. “Data also show similar annual levels of Muslims killed in attacks where religious affiliation played a role.”
Some observers have suggested that Trump’s strikes were more about securing U.S. access to Nigerian minerals by force than a serious attempt to eliminate Islamists. Nigeria has “minerals that China is benefiting from. And clearly, the Trump administration is not happy about that,” Adamu said.
Trump was open about his intentions to secure Venezuelan oil when he abducted that country’s president earlier this month.
In 2023, when Nigeria built its first lithium processing plant in the northwestern state of Kaduna, it opted for a bid from Beijing-based Ming Xin Mineral Separation rather than Elon Musk’s Tesla. “Nigeria wanted investment in terms of a physical presence on the ground, and what the Elon Musk strategy was offering was extractive—just take [it] and leave,” Adamu said.
Thursday, Jan. 15: Uganda holds general elections
Friday, Jan. 16: The board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meets to review Ethiopia’s $3.4 billion loan program.
Sunday, Jan. 18: The final match of the Africa Cup of Nations men’s soccer tournament is held in Rabat, Morocco.
Monday, Jan. 19: The U.N. Security Council receives a briefing on Sudan from the International Criminal Court.
BRICS naval exercises. BRICS naval exercises began on Monday in South Africa. But they were quickly complicated by Trump’s threats of additional tariffs against countries “doing business” with Iran amid anti-government protests in the country.
The drills were due to take place until Jan. 16, with China, Russia, and Iran participating alongside South African forces. At South Africa’s request, Iran reportedly agreed to be an observer instead to gird against possible U.S. action. Brazil, Egypt, and Ethiopia are also observing the exercises, Reuters reported.
Originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, BRICS expanded to include South Africa in 2010 and more recently added several new members, including Iran. Trump has called BRICS “anti-American.”
India, which is trying to balance its relations with the United States, opted out of the drills. Even as it asked Tehran to withdraw, South Africa’s government defended the exercises themselves as “essential,” calling them “a demonstration of our collective resolve to work together.”
Benin elections. Vote counting is underway after Benin held elections on Sunday for a new parliament and local state officials, a month after a coup attempt failed to topple President Patrice Talon. Talon’s ruling three-party coalition holds 81 out of 109 seats in the National Assembly and is expected to further strengthen its influence in the legislature.
Talon’s critics say that he has implemented a crackdown on the opposition and journalists as well as weakened basic freedoms. In late October, the country’s electoral body banned the main opposition party, the Democrats, from competing in local races, citing incomplete documentation, although they are contesting the parliamentary races.
The Democrats have also been excluded from the upcoming April presidential election for failing to secure the required number of endorsement signatures, the electoral body said. Talon cannot run in the race due to term limits, but his handpicked successor, Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni, is expected to win.
Senegal vs. the IMF. Senegal is hoping that an increase in tax collection during the first quarter of this year will boost its chances of securing a new loan from the IMF, Bloomberg reported last week.
The country is at odds with the fund, which wants Senegal to undergo a harsh debt restructuring plan. Senegal’s previous $1.8 billion IMF loan was suspended in 2024 due to the discovery of $7 billion in undisclosed debt by a previous administration. Senegal’s dollar bonds have rallied so far this year, according to Bloomberg.
Wang Yi’s Africa tour. China’s top diplomat began his annual new year tour of Africa last Wednesday, focused on trade logistics access and geopolitical diplomacy.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s trip included stops in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Lesotho. Ethiopia is navigating a comprehensive debt restructuring process under the G-20 Common Framework. China is its largest bilateral lender and trade partner.
Wang had originally been scheduled to visit Somalia, too—a country that offers China strategic Red Sea port access. But the Chinese Foreign Ministry called off the visit at the last moment “due to technical issues.”
