African leaders gathered Thursday for a summit dominated by fears over a rise in extremist groups sowing terror across the continent. From the Sahel to Nigeria, central and east Africa, armed Islamist groups carry out attacks, kidnappings and chilling massacres on a near-daily basis on the continent. This threat is increasingly drifting across porous borders, heard the summit in Malabo, also attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who called for a "rapidly operational peace and security structure".
"Africa is threatened by cross-border terrorism," said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who took to the podium to thunderous applause as he marked his country's comeback to continental politics in his first foreign trip.
"This common threat demands that we reinforce our cooperation," said Sisi, calling on his peers to "firmly face up to this plague to preserve the dignity of our people and economies." Egypt was suspended from the AU bloc after Sisi toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi while he was army chief last July. The two-day summit in Equatorial Guinea, sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer, has as its official theme "Agriculture and Food Security." However it has been hard to ignore the barrage of extremist attacks, which threaten to overshadow civil wars in Sudan and the Central African Republic.
In Nigeria's capital at least 21 people died in a bombing blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram on Wednesday, adding to over 2,000 killed this year in an insurgency which the government has been unable to curb. Boko Haram's five-year terror campaign shot to world-wide attention after they kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in April. The militants have also raised alarm in neighbouring Cameroon where they kidnapped 10 Chinese road workers in May, prompting the government to dispatch 3,000 troops to its porous border with Nigeria. In the horn of Africa Somalia's Shebab rebels have launched attacks in Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti to punish them for sending troops to an AU force fighting its militants.