Cutting aid to Africa ‘would risk security’

AFRICA could become a major security threat to the UK and Europe without international aid, a Foreign Office minister has warned.

Rory Stewart MP said Islamist militia groups waging localised insurgencies in the continent could link up with wider jihadist groups such as al-qaeda.

Poverty and lack of employment will also further fuel the migration crisis, the minister for Africa said. He spoke as the Government announced £30million of aid to tackle an “acute humanitarian crisis” in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Mr Stewart said the DRC crisis came “on top of extreme underlying poverty” in the central African country, where earlier this month rebels attacked a United Nations peacekeeping base.

He said the attack in Beni, which killed 14 peacekeepers, had been carried out by a local Islamist militia, but there was a threat from similar groups with wider jihadist ambitions.

He said: “We know for sure that in the past many apparently indigenous groups like the Taliban have begun to connect themselves with external facing groups like al-qaeda because their Islamist ideology and their vision of jihad can easily be supercharged into an international basis.”

Mr Stewart said that had not yet happened in Africa but there was a chance it could in the “medium term”.