JNIM's southward creep: why Ghana cannot afford to look away

Ghana has, so far, been spared the mass-casualty attacks that have devastated Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. But that record of relative calm increasingly looks less like immunity and more like a pause and security analysts are warning that Accra's window to act decisively before Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) fully entrenches itself along the northern border is narrowing.

A movement built for expansion
JNIM's trajectory over the past four years tells its own story. Recorded incidents linked to the group more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, and by 2024 both the frequency and lethality of attacks had climbed sharply, with casualties rising roughly two-and-a-half-fold over that same window. What began as a Sahel-confined insurgency has deliberately pushed south, exploiting forest belts and protected wildlife corridors such as the W-Arly-Pendjari complex, which straddles Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger, to move fighters, weapons and supplies with minimal interference.

The consequences for Ghana's immediate neighbors have been severe. Benin recorded a 70 percent rise in JNIM-linked deaths in 2025 compared with the previous year, despite deploying roughly 3,000 troops along its northern border. Togo has suffered deadly attacks near its own frontier, and in October 2025 JNIM claimed its first operation on Nigerian soil near the Benin border, signaling ambitions to draw Africa's most populous country into the same orbit of instability already gripping the Sahel.

Ghana's uncomfortable middle ground

Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire are frequently cited as the coastal states that have "been spared" large-scale jihadist violence. But the more precise picture emerging from field research is less reassuring. Fighters reportedly cross into Ghanaian territory not to attack, but to resupply, move equipment and seek medical treatment before returning north to the fight a deliberate strategy of using Ghana as a rear base rather than a battleground, precisely because provoking a hardened Ghanaian security response would be counterproductive to the group's own logistics.

That calculation was laid bare with unusual candour by a senior Ghanaian security official, who explained the state's posture toward JNIM's presence near the border in blunt terms: the group's capacity to strike is, in effect, the reason the state does not "disturb them too much." This tacit avoidance held even after eight Ghanaians were killed in a JNIM attack across the border in Burkina Faso in February 2026 a tragedy that nonetheless helped catalyze renewed diplomatic engagement, including the reactivation, after six years of dormancy, of the Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation with Burkina Faso, which produced seven new bilateral agreements on transport, border cooperation and counter-narcotics. Ghana has also announced plans for new military bases along the border and has run time-limited counter-terrorism exercises there, though a sustained operational presence has yet to materialize.

The economic front is already open
Even where bullets have not yet crossed the border, JNIM's disruption of regional trade corridors already touches Ghana's economy. The group's blockade tactics against fuel and goods convoys moving between Sahelian capitals and coastal ports have paralyzed sections of the Dakar–Bamako corridor, stranding thousands of containers and costing Senegal tens of millions of dollars a month. Analysts warn that the same corridors linking ports in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin to Sahelian markets face comparable risk should JNIM extend its blockade strategy eastward a scenario that would hit Ghanaian traders, freight forwarders and port revenue directly, independent of any attack on Ghanaian soil.

A narrowing window
Regional frameworks exist on paper. The Accra Initiative, launched in 2017 with Ghana as a founding member alongside Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Togo, was designed precisely to pre-empt this kind of spillover, and the EU's Security and Defence Initiative for Gulf of Guinea states has since added another layer of support. Yet coordination gaps and resource constraints have limited what these mechanisms have achieved on the ground, even as JNIM's ambitions have grown more overt.

The consensus among regional security analysts are not that catastrophe in Ghana is inevitable, but that the current approach treating the northern border as a zone to be managed quietly rather than secured decisively has a shelf life. Political instability, as seen following Benin's 2025 coup attempt, tends to widen the openings jihadist groups exploit. Ghana's institutions remain considerably stronger than those of its immediate northern neighbors, but strength alone has not spared Benin, Togo or now Nigeria from JNIM's reach. The question facing Accra is whether the current strategy of cautious accommodation can hold indefinitely, or whether it merely postpones a reckoning already under way just across the border.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

[email protected]
+233-555-275-880
References
HSToday, "JNIM's Expansion in the Sahel and Coastal West Africa," https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/jnims-expansion-in-the-sahel-and-coastal-west-africa/

Vision of Humanity, "Jihadist Expansion in the Sahel: Risks and Implications for Coastal West Africa," https://www.visionofhumanity.org/jihadist-expansion-in-the-sahel-and-threats-to-coastal-west-africa/

Stimson Center, "Southward Creep: The Sahel Insurgency Reaches Coastal West Africa," https://www.stimson.org/2026/southward-creep-the-sahel-insurgency-reaches-coastal-west-africa/

Indian Council of World Affairs, "The Growing Influence of JNIM in West Africa: Threats to Benin, Togo and Ghana," https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=1&ls_id=12356&lid=7539

ISS Africa, "JNIM's blockade tactics threaten West Africa's trade corridors," https://issafrica.org/iss-today/jnim-s-blockade-tactics-threaten-west-africa-s-trade-corridors

African Arguments, "Ghana's Northern Sovereignty Gap: JNIM and the Burkinabe Border," https://africanarguments.org/2026/07/ghanas-northern-sovereignty-gap-jnim-and-the-burkinabe-border/

International Crisis Group, "Understanding JNIM's Expansion beyond the Sahel," https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/africa/sahel-west-africa/321-le-jnim-et-le-dilemme-de-lexpansion-au-dela-du-sahel

The Africa Report, "How to stop JNIM jihad expansion in West Africa," https://www.theafricareport.com/409821/how-to-stop-jnim-jihad-expansion-in-west-africa/