INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR TERRORISM STUDIES AT

POTOMAC INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES

"Security Challenges in Africa:

Review of 2016 and Outlook for 2017"

April 13, 2017

Since 9/11, a disturbing trend of security challenges in Africa, including terrorism, civil wars, epidemics, famines, and refugee crises, have created grave regional and global strategic implications. A review of 2016 and early 2017 demonstrate that this trend is becoming far more dangerous than ever before. A panel of current and former government officials and scholars provided threat assessments as well as offered recommendations on how the U.S. and the international community can meet these growing challenges.

Opening remarks were given by Professor Don Wallace, Jr., Chairman of the International Law Institute. The panel was moderated by Professor Yonah Alexander, Director of Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies and Senior Fellow at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. The panel consisted of: Dr. Benjamin Nickels, Associate Professor and Academic Chair of Transnational Threats and Counterterrorism, Africa Center for Strategic Studies,  at the National Defense University; Wafa Bughaighis, Chargé d'Affaires for the Embassy of Libya; Jennifer Cooke, Director of theAfrica Program the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Dr. Scott Savran, former professor at Virginia Tech and Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan and currently conducting research on early Islam; and Professor Peter K. Forster, Associate Dean for Online and Professional Education at Pennsylvania State University and co-chair of the NATO/OSCE Partnership for Peace Consortium Combating Terrorism Working Group (CTWG). Closing remarks were given by General Alfred Gray, USMC (Ret.), Twenty-Ninth Commandant of the United States Marine Corps and Senior Fellow and Chairman of the Board of Regents at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Along with our seminar, we also released a report titled “Terrorism in North Africa and the Sahel in 2016" to read this report click here.

Watch the seminar below or on Ustream here.