Afour-day terrorist siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya's Nairobi in late September, which was carried out by extreme Islamists, killed nearly 70 people and injured more than 170 others. While sub-Saharan African countries have enjoyed economic growth for the past several years, the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding, providing a hotbed for terrorist activities by extreme Islamists.
Governments in the region should strive to eradicate the poverty that provide fertile ground for the growth of terrorism by implementing polices to boost the growth of local agriculture and manufacturing industries.
Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida-linked group, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group is based in neighboring Somalia, where a civil war has dragged on for more than 20 years. Al-Qaida and its affiliated groups have been active in Africa for years now. On Aug. 7, 1998, it carried out simultaneous bombing attacks at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing hundreds of people. In 2010, an al-Shabaab suicide bombing in neighboring Uganda killed 76. In January, al-Qaida au Maghreb Islamique carried out an attack on a gas facility in southeastern Algeria. Ten Japanese nationals were among those killed.