Contemporary Intelligence in Africa

The edited volume examines contemporary intelligence and tradecraft in Africa.

The work offers a timely and empirically grounded account of African intelligence. It provides a multi-contributor narrative that explains contemporary dynamics without discounting historical and external influences, as well as explaining systemic dynamics borne by African agency. The volume features chapters on different issues and themes in intelligence studies, which include but are not limited to intelligence politicization, covert operations and subversion during political transitions, institutionalizing intelligence in post-conflict states, intelligence and counterterrorism, financial intelligence and complex crimes, intelligence professionalization, media and intelligence, intelligence humanization, environmental intelligence, and others. The volume is geographically representative and features case studies from the five regions of Africa: North Africa (the Maghreb), East Africa (or Horn of), Central Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa. Without following a specific theoretical orientation, the book also aims to start a conversation around the prospects for a theory for African intelligence, with the various chapters paying attention to the political, social, and economic nuances that have a bearing on contemporary intelligence in Africa.

This book will be of great interest to students of intelligence studies, African politics, security studies, and IR.

Tshepo Gwatiwa is a Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) and Senior Researcher Fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC), University of Johannesburg (South Africa). He is the author of The African Union and African Agency in International Politics (2022) and is co-editor (with Justin van der Merwe) of Expanding US Military Command in Africa: Elites, Networks and Grand Strategy (2021).