The African Update

An anti-imperialist perspective on political, economic, and social developments across Africa.

American imperialism is stretched thin and failing to translate military action into strategic political achievements in multiple theatres around the globe.These difficulties are further exacerbated by supply chain & resource constraints that is severely impacting the US’s military production capacity. In response, Washington is increasingly seeking influence through methods that minimise visible, large-scale occupation while maximizing covert leverage over local decision-making. The shift reflects a strategic pivot away from resource-intensive mass troop deployments and toward psychological operations, intelligence dominance, drone warfare and the management of local collaborators to advance the interests of American imperialism.

This new strategy can be seen in the creation of a specialized US psychological operations company within the AFRICOM framework: the Delta company. It was nicknamed Drongo company, after the African bird which uses a variety of tactics to influence other animals to abandon their food which the Drongo then claims for itself. The company was activated on July 15th, 2026 as part of a broader effort to “amplify [AFRICOM’s] impact on the continent” with the use of “low cost and high yield activities”. This approach treats information and perception as battlefields and are now increasingly prioritizing them. According to AFRICOM itself, one of the primary issues that the psychological operations of the Drongo company will be addressing is the 75% reduction in its force posture in Africa and the loss of regional allies in the past 10 years, namely its forced exit from the Sahel by the AES. All mediums and tools will be used in these operations, prime among them being social media. Pro-West news outlets, academics, commentators & bot swarms will be mobilised in unison to amplify imperialist narratives while discrediting those who are seen as attempting to “box the US out of the resources [in Africa] that energise our industrial base” as stated by AFRICOM commander Dagvin R.M. Anderson. The regions these operations will focus on include the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Lake Chad Basin, the Gulf of Guinea & North Africa.

The establishment of Drongo company comes shortly after the same strategic logic was used in Nigeria where the US withdrew troops after just 5 months of deployment. The US claimed that a joint operation against ISWAP (Islamic State West African Province) had been successfully completed and there was no reason for their troops to remain in Nigeria. This narrative shouldn’t be taken at face value. The trajectory of US involvement in Nigeria is a case study in how this ‘maximalist to minimalist’ strategic pivot takes place. In late October 2025, Nigeria was designated by the US as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) due to a “christian genocide”. Aid cuts and military intervention were threatened if Nigeria failed to put a stop to this alleged genocide. In early November 2025, Nigeria folds under this coercive pressure and agrees to collaborate with the US in counterterrorism training and by the end of the month the US is conducting ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) flights daily, notably near the Niger-Nigeria border. Then came the Christmas Day strikes, and in February 2026, the US announced that it would deploy 200 military personnel including analysts, advisors and special forces. In mid-May AFRICOM and the Nigerian Army carried out airstrikes on ISWAP positions in the Lake Chad basin region. By July 2026, most of the troops have left and Trump is praising President Tinubu for the success of their joint operations and a new era in their nations’ bilateral partnership’. The troops are gone but what was left behind? The deployment was genuinely meant to be temporary but the act itself created leverage: intelligence access (including ISTAR flights), operational channels and increased direct influence over what security priorities are treated as urgent and what is ignored. All of this without the political and logistical costs of a sustained ground presence. Imperialist posture is designed to be adaptive so that when overt deployment becomes politically inconvenient or operationally taxing, those burdens can be shifted to local partners and its resources can be refocused and repositioned.

This playbook may also be playing out in Mali, where Washington’s posture mixes coercive threats with “collaboration” on its own terms. The US has been attempting to gain overflight rights for over a year so it could conduct surveillance missions in Mali, going as far as lifting sanctions on key Malian officials. However, Mali didn’t budge. Just recently, the US government, via its media apparatus, rather than through diplomatic channels, announced that it was considering military actions in Mali to “counter” JNIM. Washington is hoping that this announcement will intimidate Bamako into giving them access to its airspace. The covert message here is clear: if Mali refuses, the US will conduct strikes unilaterally. Overflight permission is not simply about surveillance. It is also about who has the final say when it comes to targeting logic, timing, and the hierarchy of threats. It changes what imperialism’s mercenaries believe they can do, what populations are pressured to accept, and what kind of role other partners can play.

US-led imperialism is readjusting its posture in Africa to maximize effect with reduced resource commitment. The shift from large kinetic deployments to psychological and intelligence operations reduces the political costs that come with public casualties and long-term occupation. It also allows the US to remain present without being easily identified as the direct occupier.

The aim is to weaken or reshape revolutionary projects that challenge the existing order—particularly initiatives that aim at regional solidarity and delinking from western security & economic architectures. The wider geopolitical motivation is also clear, the US increasingly orients its strategy toward countering the growing influence of China and Russia in Africa. Its decreased ability to devote resources on deployments in Africa is in part due to the necessity to prepare for confrontation with China and to the sustained losses in Ukraine and West Asia.

Ultimately, these maneuvers must be confronted with political clarity. Conscious Africans must recognise this pattern and confront it. Western powers do not come to “fight terrorism”. They come to shape political outcomes, control information flows, and keep African nations structurally dependent on their “collaboration”. The response must therefore be equally strategic. Unity across popular forces, skepticism towards seemingly friendly gestures from the imperialists and resistance to any form of “collaboration” that demands the surrender of sovereignty.