Obama and His Antiterrorism Coalition are Missing Something

"With more and more terrorist groups in Africa pledging allegiance to ISIS and emulating their style in operations, one would expect that equal measures of counter insurgency will be invested in Africa as is the middle east by the US and its coalition allies"

No one ever says fighting terrorism is simple or has to be easy. When one considers how pretty quick and simple it is for a terrorist organisation to grow and spread into various regions of the globe, being discouraged about its total defeat and annihilation becomes easy.
At a point last year when ISIS was at its grand here-we-come global announcement period, taking over villages and even cities and beheading westerners for fun, President Obama had promised that he would "degrade and degrade" ISIS. Yes, those were strong promises impregnating with strong hope but some of us who have been watching this terror-anti-terror battle for a considerable number of years knew what a task it was to keep that promise.
The US needed to woo several countries into a coalition to begin the airstrikes, ISIS and other terrorist organizations do not need permission from any authority to begin operations from any country. All they need is a porous border and a handful of guys that are ready to die for their course. This, is only one out of a truck load of challenges in the anti-terrorism fight.
However, for every of these challenges, there is a measure to apply that deals with it. One of such is to cover all the base and ensure that all the stones (at least the ones that can be seen) are turned. In anti-terror terms, this means that in every corner of the world where terror or acts of terror happen or suspected to happen, equal attention is paid. This is because terrorist organizations are always looking for the least noticeable places to hide and operate from. This makes African villages enticing.
ISIS has been seen to be growing in influence among African Islamic extremists since late last year. Boko Haram in northern Nigeria has pledged allegiance to there leader, Abu Bakr alal-Baghdadi. The same goes for Jund al-Khilafah, the Algerian al-Qaeda splinter group that beheaded French Mountain Guard, Herve Gourdel in October last year. In Libya, ISIS-loyal fighters (who Libyan security forces said are over 2,000 in number) operate from Sirte and in April beheaded and shot thirty Ethiopian Christians among many other activities and attacks in that country. More recently is the despicable attack in Tunisia.
These events are too notable and hugely significant in the fight against ISIS for them to be overlooked.
President Obama and his coalition cannot "degrade and destroy" ISIS if they continue to overlook its many tentacles in other parts of the world. You can point one or two activities of the US in these African States against terrorism but whatever it is they are doing is not adequate so long it fails to put as much pressure on the local terrorists as the airstrikes in Syria and Iraq puts on ISIS. As long as there is a conducive hiding place somewhere else no matter how many thousand miles away, there will always be a training camp for more fighters and other attacks to distract the coalition.
This is a reality that should not have been lost to anyone from the onset. Any terror organization thinking of networking across regions is thinking Africa, conversely, any government thinking to stop a terrorist organization from spreading should be thinking Africa. High rates of poverty and unemployment, porous borders, political instability and largely incompetent and inadequately armed local forces are just part of the factors that make Africa a good breeding ground for ISIS and their likes. It would thus make more sense that as the airstrikes are going on in Syria and Iraq, rigorous Intel gathering and surveillance is happening in African States where Islamic extremism seems more possible.
I agree that Africa might not be staged on the same exotic stand of the mysterious US foreign policy like the middle east is, but not paying equal attention to terrorism in Africa hurts the antiterrorism fight everywhere else.