CAIRO — The March 18 terrorist attack in Tunisia on Bardo Museum that resulted in the death of 20 tourists and the March 7 broadcast of a video on social media sites showing the Nigerian movement Boko Haram pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) show the expansion of IS into the African continent. Up until this point, IS' presence in Africa seemed confined to North Africa in Libya’s coastal cities, Egypt’s Sinai and some places in Algeria.
The latest indicators of IS’ expansion pose a new threat to the entire African continent. The expansion in Africa is favorable for the group due to poverty, political conflict, continual sectarian tension and the illegal spread of weapons. This supports IS’ ambitions to extend the so-called caliphate from the Levant to the land of Egypt, the land of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and to the Maghreb, according to a map of the caliphate published by the group on its social media sites.
