The situation in West Africa has been drawing growing attention owing to worries that this is a region where terrorist entities and transnational organised crime intersect. According to this year’s Global Crime Index published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, the region ranks among the highest in Africa in terms of the prevalence of all types of transnational crime.
Data from the 2025 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) also point to West Africa as being among the regions most affected by terrorism, despite a decline in the total number of attacks. Most of this terrorist activity has centred around Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
The impacts of terrorism extend beyond the numbers of attacks and the casualty figures, however. The economic activities that sustain terrorist entities also have far-reaching consequences. Illicit gold mining, drug-trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, smuggling, and other transborder crimes can exact a significant toll on the states and societies of the region, exemplified by recent events in Mali, where the capital Bamako has come under what has been described as an indirect blockade by the Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
This terrorist group has attacked fuel tankers crossing into Mali and abducted their drivers to prevent them from reaching the capital, confiscating their cargo and also holding them for ransom. This, when combined with JNIM’s other illicit activities, which have included cattle theft and illicit goldmining, underscores the scale of the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and organised crime in West Africa.
The region increasingly serves as a transit point for drug-smuggling from Latin America to Europe, especially of cocaine, cannabis, and synthetic drugs. While terrorist groups in the region do not directly control drug cultivation, production, or trade, they offer protection to smuggling networks. They also exact transit fees for shipments passing through the territories under their control. Tramadol trafficking has reportedly risen significantly in Mali, Niger, and Ghana, whether in the form of consumer markets for this drug or as transit points to other African countries.
Terrorist groups have long engaged in kidnapping for ransom. Often working in collaboration with organised crime networks, they have routinely kidnapped civilians, mostly women and children, although they have also targeted political figures to extract ransoms. JNIM’s abduction of oil-tanker drivers is a more sophisticated development of this practice, in view of the multipurpose nature of its target.
The GTI report says that JNIM, Al-Qaeda’s main franchise in West Africa, carried out 1,193 such abductions between 2017 and 2021, the majority occurring in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
Artisanal goldmining also remains an important source of revenue for terrorist entities in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. While such mining is not inherently illegal, terrorist groups exploit it by exacting protection fees from miners and siphoning off large quantities of extracted gold for smuggling.
Often the groups engage in violent turf wars between each other or with organised crime networks in order to monopolise control over mining areas. The value of informally and illegally extracted gold in Burkina Faso and Mali is estimated to be in the billions of dollars, and this is used to enrich terrorist organisations as well as complicit local players.
The multilayered situation involving goldmining throws into relief the weak control of central governments in the region, which are often unable to assert full sovereignty over their territory and therefore to carry out policies aimed at disrupting the links between terrorism and criminal networks. The security vacuum that affects West Africa in general fosters an environment that sustains the mutually beneficial relationship between terrorism and organised crime.
Another feature common to many West African countries is the popular antipathy towards the former colonial powers and, hence, towards the European and particularly the French forces that had been leading relatively unsuccessful counterterrorist efforts since 2012.
Against this backdrop, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and formed a new alliance. This has been strengthening its ties with Russia and China, which have stepped in to fill the security vacuum left by the departing European forces, a vacuum that also fosters the informal economic activities that terrorist groups prey on.
Monitoring the evolving relationship between terrorist groups and transnational crime and developing policies to mitigate their harmful impacts are not solely the responsibility of the West African nations. Given the broader implications of the problem, these activities should also involve other African countries and international stakeholders.
The writer is an expert on security policies in the MENA region.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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