The Insurgency in Cabo Delgado: Challenges of Terrorism and Prospects for Regional Integration in Southern Africa from a Central African Perspective

Abstract:
     Across the African continent, the complexities of security, development, and sovereignty converge within a highly fragile geopolitical landscape that transcends national borders and raises fundamental questions about African states’ ability to confront internal challenges through a transnational, integrative approach. In the south of the continent, particularly in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado Province, this reality is embodied in an armed insurgency led by local groups known as “Al-Shabaab,” some of which are affiliated with the Islamic State. The conflict has resulted in thousands of deaths, more than one million displaced persons, and the disruption of strategic natural gas investments.
   The Cabo Delgado crisis is not merely an isolated instance of violence; it reveals a deep structural fragility of the state and a failure of effective regional response. This in turn revives a critical question: How does the insurgency in Cabo Delgado affect regional integration projects in Southern Africa? And can this impact be understood by analyzing the insurgency itself as one manifestation of the continent’s political and historical fragility?
   This study centers on analyzing the Cabo Delgado insurgency as its primary analytical entry point, applying an Afrocentric lens that situates the phenomenon within its historical, cultural, and social context. It deliberately moves away from Western reductionist framings that explain violence through stereotypical notions such as “religious extremism” or “extreme poverty.” In this sense, the analysis goes beyond describing the crisis to interrogate the limits of regional responses and to assess the effectiveness of integration frameworks—particularly the interventions of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)—thereby exposing the tension between integrative discourse and the on-the-ground realities of conflict.