Africa’s Sahel region is a terrorism hotspot, according to the latest Global Terrorism Indexpublished by the Institute for Economics and Peace. About 51% of global terror-related deaths are recorded in the Sahel where two al-Qaeda-linked jihadi groups are expanding.
Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) and the so-called Islamic State groups are behind the wave of terror in the Sahel, especially in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
These groups are increasingly spreading south and infiltrating countries such as Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana too.
In Benin’s northern border towns, attacks on military outposts and civilians are a constant threat. In April 2025, JNIM militants killed at least 54 soldiers along the shared border with Burkina Faso and Niger. Togo has seen a similar surge in terror attacks.
Why the coast?
A corridor for terror groups to escape military offensives, the long stretch of coastal West Africa is also a vital trade artery and gateways into the landlocked countries and key to European shipping lines.
Perhaps more importantly, there’s the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) Complex of protected lands and parks which cuts across Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger and borders Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. Experts say it provides, not only a “safe buffer” for terrorists, but also serves as a zone for smuggling and other illicit economic activities.
Groups like JNIM are entrenched in the large expanse of the forest from which they launch attacks along the Benin-Niger border.
“A lot of JNIM’s activity in Benin initially was kind of related to its operations in Burkina Faso and a means of getting more movement and ability to expand and further encircle Burkina Faso,” James Barnett, research fellow at Hudson Institute, told DW. Terror groups, he added, have also been tapping into illicit economies in the areas and trying to recruit in the region.
A domino effect
In recent years, Sahel-based terrorists have been moving southwards to largely ungoverned spaces in West Africa. They “harbor strategic minerals and materials such as timber, which have become sources of terrorism financing across that corridor,” Oluwole Ojewale, a researcher at the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies, told DW.
The northern regions of many of the region’s coastal countries are sparsely populated and underdeveloped – with youth frustration and a sense of neglect that terrorist groups wanting to recruit often exploit. These areas “continue to serve as a strategic hub for terrorist groups in recent times,” according to Oluwole.
Then, there’s the collapse of security cooperation between the Sahel and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that followed the formation the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. According to experts, the ensuing mistrust has left a gap that allows the violence to spill over from the Sahel to the coast.
“[It’s] the reason why it has become an easy drive for those terrorist groups to actually percolate and spread their influence into the coastal states,” Ojewale said.
“Cross-border intelligence, particularly between the central Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, with the rest of West Africa has became really minimal and grossly insufficient to curb cross-border infiltration of terrorist groups.”
There’s mistrust to be overcome
A wave of initiatives by individual coastal countries have seen security forces deployed to ensure border control in their fragile northern territories. Benin has deployed some 3,000 soldiers along its border with Burkina Faso and Chad to curb incursions.
Some of the coastal countries have bilateral security deals. Earlier this year, Benin and Nigeria agreed to work together to strengthen border security.
According to Barnett, resources and logistics alone is not enough to stem the spillover of terrorism. Coastal and Sahel states need to overcome their mistrust and share intelligence in a part of Africa where the threats vary from country to country, he told DW.
“There’s been a lot of mistrust in the region, I think — mistrust even between some of those states. That’s something the countries are still working on: building adequate trust and the political will to work together.”
Incorporating socioeconomic initiatives alongside security responses is imperative, he added. Cote d’Ivoire has rolled out a range of social projects to alleviate poverty and youth unemployment while building trust between the military and communities.
“The state is there to more than just sporadically police the region, which often leads to community perception that they’re being targeted or harassed. And instead is a way of trying to gain a degree of buy-in by addressing socioeconomic concerns, and be a partner in more than just the security fronts, but also in actually responding to community needs,” Barnett said.
Edited by: Benita van Eyssen
