Eurocentrism, Africanity and ‘the Jihad’: Towards an Africa Worldview on Jihadism

Constructions of the Jihadist threat in the West African sub-region have been dominated by knowledge preferences around the ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWoT). Analysis of political response to terrorism led by researchers and policy makers also appear to derive from GWoT narratives as the expense of the lived experiences and local conditions of the relevant African communities. The threat of Jihadism in Africa is therefore largely ‘outsourced’ to the Middle East. Through a reconstruction of the ‘idea’ of Africa in Western consciousness, this article contends that the above constructions resurrect a logic of prejudice against local African political, cultural and historical dynamism. The article therefore proposes a new approach for understanding the Jihadist threat in (West) Africa, using Critical Security Studies and Decoloniality frameworks, towards a worldview that is counter-hegemonic, emancipatory and progressive.