On Saturday, gunmen burst into a shopping mall in Kenya, firing automatic weapons and "tossing grenades like maize to chickens." According to reports confirmed by virtually all the world's major news agencies, the gunmen shouted in Swahili that Muslims would be allowed to leave, while all others would be slaughtered. Later on, a Twitter feed belonging to the extremist group Al- Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Somali terrrorist group.

In summary, the latest figures indicate about 70 fatalities and more than 150 injured persons, with several foreign nationals and at least one prominent African poet listed among the dead.

For us Africans, this latest attack should be viewed from the perspective of similar attacks by other jihadist outfits in Africa - including Nigeria's dreaded Boko Haram and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terrorist franchise that operates in north Africa. These activities should concern us because, at a forum of the African Union in 2012, many international security agencies warned African heads of state that these organisations were deepening their ties with each other and were unobtrusively coordinating their actions across the African continent.

Furthermore, and perhaps more worryingly, even the most aggressive military campaigns in recent years against these terrorist groups - the Nigerian army on Boko Haram, the French on al-Qaeda in Mali, the African Union on al-Shabaab in Somalia - have been unable to fully root out any of them. And as the strike on the Kenyan mall shows, extremist violence knows no bounds. In fact, as one captured jihadist is reported to have said, there is neither north nor south in jihad.

My question, then, is: Who will save us from the scourge of extremist religious violence? How will Africa cope with this latest threat along with the continent's myriad other challenges?

I have always seen that extremism is problem.

Extremism in (some fanatic) christianity seem to breed greed while (in some fanatic) islam, it breeds terrorism.

My opinion.

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