Poverty and technology gap "fuel terror in Africa"

from Reuters South Africa

By Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Poverty and lack of police skills are feeding international terrorism in Africa, delegates at a regional security conference said on Wednesday, while distancing themselves from the U.S.-led war on terror.

Peter Munya, Kenya's Assistant Internal Security Minister, told the Nairobi meeting developing countries must provide better job opportunities for impoverished youths to steer them away from recruiters working for extremist organisations.

"We must offer our youth the opportunity to succeed in our society so they do not become vulnerable," he said.

Munya told the conference -- which was called to study the risk of more attacks in east Africa -- that poor nations faced huge difficulties trying to keep track of technology-savvy terrorists who often seem one step ahead of the authorities.

"African countries do not have the resources, capacity and adequate equipment to detect sophisticated terrorism devices," he said. "We do not have the capacity to put in place the infrastructure to fight."

Bombings blamed on al Qaeda struck Kenya in 1998, killing at least 225 people at the U.S. Embassy, and in 2002, killing 15 people at an Israeli-owned hotel on the coast. Washington warns its citizens of "continuing terrorist threats" in the country.

Boudacar Diarra, head of the Algiers-based African Centre for Study and Research on Terrorism, told reporters the "African approach" differed from the U.S. counter-terrorism approach.

"There is an African strategy for fighting terrorism based on African experience, which was in place long before the events on September 11, 2001," he said.

"In fighting terrorism we must always still recognise human rights law, humanitarian law and refugee law."