All Africa Monitor

New analysis suggests the shadowy insurgency benefited from the 2013 war in Mali, that its leader 'Abubakar Shekau' may be both a single person and the name for a collective leadership, and that the group's ability to destabilize remains strong.

Adding up all the dynamics of history, culture, and grievance doesn't explain what's happened with Muslims and Christians. When it comes to violence, not everything has a reason. 

A negotiated swap for the girls makes so much sense. 

As the votes got counted last week, President Joyce Banda saw the numbers and shouted fraud. 

Satellites have been used with great effect to confirm human rights abuses and war crimes. Now they will try to 'follow the money' and track those aiding war in East Africa and beyond.

US efforts on the 300 girls is small and may not help. But it is large enough to start 'mission creep' and get America blamed for a war on Islam. Nigeria claims now to have found the girls.

President Jonathan now calls Boko Haram the 'new frontier' of terror. Yet in doing so he ignores the old and ongoing excesses of his own security forces. 

Darfuri footballers come from 9 of the 13 major camps. They've had tryouts and training but are still short on scratch. 

That news has been bandied about for some time: Yet it fits Mr. Kony's pattern of marginalizing talent and senior officers in the pursuit of absolute control and those who are loyal.

The 2014 elections mark the emergence of new parties like the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters -- and portend a politics based on issues not loyalty to ANC. 

Public protest and social media in Nigeria, and in places like New York and Washington, have created a tipping point for help in recovering the abducted school girls.

President Obama, with teenage girls of his own, has called Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 250 school girls an 'outrage.' Eight more girls were taken on Tuesday.

President Goodluck Jonathan should avail Nigeria of the same international help, for example, used to track and capture Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army in eastern Africa. 

Ethnic politics and shifting loyalties around Bentiu, an oil-gateway town, make it difficult for either the government or rebels to hold. Meanwhile, as war continues, previous peace agreement seems worthless. 

Fighting and displacement has left millions at risk of famine, necessitating a robust US humanitarian and diplomatic response, as the peace process inches along in Ethiopia.

Rwanda is the best success story of state-building in Africa in the last 20 years, despite its autocratic habits. 

With intensified struggle between Boko Haram and Nigerian military, should a conversation begin about African multinational force intervention?

Images from Satellite Sentinel Project confirm torching by armed militia of refuge for 3,000 displaced persons. Eyewitnesses describe fatality, injuries, kidnapping and attendant mayhem.

With Kenya's unilateral decision to enter and create a new buffer state inside Somalia, Ahmed Abdi Godane's urging this week to kick foreigners out has an audience, and even some logic. 

In the wake of bloodshed around major military barracks in Maiduguri, one of Boko Haram's leaders has released two videos. What's really going on in northern Nigeria conflict is very unclear.