Over the past several years, West Africa and the Sahel region have experienced a significant decline in stability in parallel to a dramatic rise in terrorist activity. The Sahel, in particular, has emerged as an epicenter and incubator of regional and global terrorism, which has increased by more than 2,000% in the region in the last 15 years.

In view of this growing terrorist threat, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) New York Office and Counter Extremism Project (CEP) co-organized an expert discussion on Tuesday, January 30, 2024 on The Deteriorating Security Situation in West Africa: Assessing the Region's Escalating Terrorism Threat. The discussion featured as speakers Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director at CEP, who provided a timely assessment on the current terrorist threat in West Africa, including the formation and expansion of major networks and actors in the region and their operational capabilities, and Ulf Laessing, Head of the Regional Programme Sahel at the KAS Office in Mali, who gave an outlook for regional stability amid foreign intervention and multidimensional challenges.

The expert discussion was organized as part of the roll-out for the joint KAS-CEP project, The Deteriorating Security Situation in West Africa, aimed at raising awareness among the international community as to the myriad security threats in West Africa and develop actionable policy recommendations to mitigate these challenges.