Last week, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni acknowledged that thousands of Ugandan soldiers are fighting on the side of the government in South Sudan’s civil war.

Ugandan soldiers are also fighting in Somalia against the extremist group Al Shabab, alongside troops from Kenya, Ethiopia and Burundi. The U.S. Air Force recently airlifted Burundian and Rwandan soldiers to take part in peacekeeping efforts in the Central African Republic.

Other African peacekeepers and expeditionary forces are engaged in combat missions in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other war zones.

It’s a new age of military intervention by Africans in Africa. And the implications are huge for the entire world.

In some ways, the situation is reminiscent of the 1990s and early years of this millennium, when civil wars across the African continent drew in African powers and countries from all over the world. The difference today is that African countries intervene on behalf of embattled neighboring governments, not against them.

Supporting rebel groups is out. Only pariah governments like Sudan and Eritrea still engage in the practice.