Border security is an increasing challenge worldwide in an progressively globalised world, where it is easier for people, goods and weapons to cross international borders than ever before. Criminals are exploiting this weakness to cross borders more freely and commit serious crimes. For African countries, "porous" borders are endemic. Since African countries gained independence, the borders have been a recurrent source of conflicts and disputes on the continent. Most of the borders are poorly defined, covering vast, sparsely populated desert areas. The location of strategic natural resources in cross-border areas poses additional challenges. Military planners face increasing complexity of operations, made harder to combat with declining defence budgets. The spread of al Qaeda and its affiliates into the region have increased the challenges by several orders of magnitude - adding to perennial problems of socio-economic instability, illegal migration, violent and syndicated crime, terrorism and extremism. Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia and Sudan, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), originally based in Algeria and since operating in the Sahara and Sahel, among many others are a growing menace, further destabilising the region and increasingly linked both to one another and to other groups operating in the Middle East.
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