In April 2012, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) declared its readiness to deploy 3,000 troops to northern Mali in response to seizures of territory by Tuareg separatists and Islamist militias. Left unanswered was the question of how ECOWAS would transport these troops and their equipment to Mali. Only airlift resources would be able to deliver personnel and heavy equipment into the area of operations (AO) in a timely manner, provide operational mobility within the AO against dispersed and heavily armed irregular forces, monitor a geographic area larger than France, and sustain operations for months or years. The inability to respond to these challenges to territorial control, in turn, further emboldens such separatists and other spoilers.

The seizure of more than half of Mali’s land area by Islamic militants, the growing violence of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, and years of religious-inspired violence in Somalia have heightened attention on Islamic militancy in Africa.

There are approximately 500,000 individuals in a variety of nonstate militias, national armies, and paramilitary groups slated to undergo DDR programs across Africa. This is consistent with the estimated average annual DDR caseload for most of the last decade. As previous large-scale efforts in Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have wound down, new challenges in South Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Great Lakes region have emerged. Organized DDR initiatives were underway in 10 African states in 2012, and the need for disarmament was apparent in many others.