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This might be of some interest.
I'm reading Perspectives on Military Intelligence from the First World War to Mali - Between Learning and Law (by various authors and editors) in relation to the recent topic.
There are several ongoing peacekeeping mission in Mali, on behalf of the EU, and the UN, since the conflict of 2012. Chapter 9 examines the case of MINUSMA - the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali - at least the intelligence gathering part. It has a couple of memorable tidbits, I'm not finished yet however.
At one point the peacekeeping force consisted about 20 000 military personnel (way larger then Mali's own force), besides they employed policemen, international civilians, UN volunteers, and local hires. Most of the personnel is African in origin.
From intelligence point of view, they were (and are) capable of gathering huge amount of it, since day zero. They have a few ways of collecting intel, from simply talking to locals, through helicopter recon (Dutch army even sent Apaches) and UAVs, to "Open Source Intelligence". However quite a few obstacles is/was rendering it less useful. In the beginning the dedicated units lacked direction, due to the commander of the force only gave vague instructions, the second dude who took over however solved this. But there are many ongoing problems, for example the lack of equipment, especially computers, they could process the data and store it. Language barrier is also a major problem: due to the international nature of the UN forces they speak many languages, but worse people in Mali themselves have many other languages, frequently they don't speak French, which is a lingua franca in the region. Many of UN soldiers illiterate(!), not to mention the locals. One juicy tidbit is that the average people of Mali doesn't understand the nature of the conflict going on around him, they only perceive the quarrels in their local communities between groups and individuals.
Some pages still left from the chapter will see if there's any noteworthy in there.