The U.S.'s Military Presence in 12-13 African Nations

   I'm reading along in a story about how the media neglected the Boko Haram massacre of, reportedly, 2,000 people when I come to the final sentence, which asks how often have stories appeared about the presence of U.S. military operations in 12 sub-Saharan African nations.
   Say what?
   I google and find a Washington Post story from May 2014 suggesting most of these deployments are small, such as 10 troops in Mali, serving to "liaison" with French and African troops. Some deployments are on intelligence-gathering missions, such as the 80 troops in Chad searching for the 276 schoolgirls Boko Haram kidnapped. (This is an old story, so are these troops still there?)  Some are there to support drone planes. The largest group of soldiers is at a major U.S. military base, Camp Lemonnierin, in Djibouti, with about 4,000 troops being there.
   It does not appear any of the troops are involved in shooting-their-guns-type combat. Thus, perhaps, the lack of news coverage.