The Timbuktu Institute research center in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation presented Thursday, May 27, its report on the security situation in the Kédougou region, in south-eastern Senegal, a border area between Mali and Guinea.

With our correspondent in Dakar, Charlotte Idrac

"The Battle of the East" will take place, and we must prepare for it. Geographical borderline and out-of-center location, unequal distribution of mineral wealth, circulation of explosives used in gold mines, or even defective basic infrastructure ... The study by the Timbuktu Institute reports a "cocktail of risk factors" in the Kédougou region. For its authors, “socio-economic frustrations appear to be the main causes of radicalization”.

The report says that in 2019 and 2020, "the number of arrests of people, mostly of foreign origin, with explosives, increased worryingly" in the area.