Africa in the Crosshairs of Global Terrorism—The Case of Kenya up to the COVID-19 Era

Like many other regions, Africa has been a target of global terrorism in recent decades with countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Congo DRC, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Kenya being among the most affected. Specifically, Kenya is ranked 23 out of 135 on the 2020 Global Terrorism Index which measures the impact of terrorism on countries. The same index ranks Kenya twelfth in Africa in terms of terrorism impact after Nigeria, Somalia, Congo DRC, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In this chapter, I use data from the Rand Global Terrorism database and other sources to explore Kenya’s experience with global terrorism in the 1975–2018 period before briefly reflecting on the same in the COVID and post-COVID era. The chapter starts with an exploration of the factors behind Kenya’s vulnerability to global terrorism before moving on to explore the temporal and geographic distribution of terrorist incidents in the study period, their victims (i.e., number of people killed and wounded), property damage, weapons used, responsible terrorist groups, and the challenges of dealing with terrorism in the post-COVID era including the worrying rise of the terrorism-climate nexus. A good understanding of these issues can help Kenya to protect itself from future terrorism attacks.