Guns, Gold and Cocaine: The Terror-Drug Nexus Reshaping West Africa

The cocaine boom on West Africa's coast is only half the story. Inland, security officials warn that the same routes and the same illicit economies are increasingly used by jihadist groups, and that the money is moving south with them.

The threat is already large. The UN's regional envoy told the Security Council in July that drug production, trafficking and consumption are rising fast, particularly in coastal states making numerous seizures.

He described a Sahel where terrorism is changing its face: on April 25, a coalition of JNIM, al-Qaeda's affiliate, and the Azawad Liberation Front launched simultaneous attacks on Bamako, Kati, Gao, Kidal and Mopti, killing civilians and soldiers, including Mali's defence minister.

Niger has seen attacks on Niamey airport and a base in Tahoua, and Burkina Faso's north and east face attacks, some using drones.

US officials link the two problems directly.

According to THISDAY, AFRICOM's commander told lawmakers in May that ISIS-West Africa, ISIS-Sahel and JNIM exploit the same trafficking routes as transnational criminal organisations.

He said drug proceeds fund recruitment, weapons and operations, and that this complicates counter-terrorism in states hit by coups and reduced international security presence.Analysts stress that this is a working arrangement, not a shared ideology.

Geopolitical Monitor describes a hybrid criminal economy in which drug revenue helps pay for weapons, logistics and fighters, while armed groups sell territorial protection, route control and cross-border corridors.

The idea is not new: a 2022 study recalls a 2018 DEA sting in which Latin American traffickers offered surface-to-air missiles to Ansar Dine, a JNIM component, in exchange for cocaine and safe passage across the Sahara.

The Atlantic Council has warned that what sets the Sahel apart from Latin America or Southeast Asia is that the armed groups involved are international jihadist organisations willing to export violence.

The geography is moving toward the coast. Crisis Group counts JNIM-linked incidents in Benin rising from six between 2019 and 2021 to 66 in 2022, 173 in 2023 and 138 in 2024, and notes the group has a presence in countries where it does not attack.

HSToday reports that JNIM claimed attacks along the Benin-Nigeria border, its first acknowledged operations inside Nigeria, using forest belts and the W-Arly-Pendjari protected area for movement and staging.

Meanwhile, UNODC found cocaine seizures in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger jumped to 1,466 kg in 2022 from a 13 kg annual average between 2013 and 2020.

This is not simple. Much of the evidence describes taxation and protection of trafficking rather than groups running the cocaine trade, and the scale of the money is hard to verify.

Governments also have their own incentives to frame every problem as terrorism. But the direction is clear: the same weak borders, corrupt officials and lightly policed ports serve both traffickers and militants.

For Ghana and its neighbours, the lesson is that drug enforcement and counter-terrorism can no longer be separate files.

Port integrity, border intelligence and financial tracking against traffickers also starve insurgents, and the northern frontier deserves the same attention as Tema.

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

International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. (USIP)

[email protected]
+233555275880

Sources
UN News, "West Africa and the Sahel: Terrorism is changing its face": https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1167940

THISDAY, "US Links Terrorism Funding in Nigeria, Others to Transnational Drug Cartels": https://www.thisdaylive.com/2026/05/21/us-links-terrorism-funding-in-nigeria-others-to-transnational-drug-cartels/

Geopolitical Monitor, "Africa: Next Frontline in the Global Drug Trade?": https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/africa-next-frontline-in-the-global-drug-trade/

Atlantic Council, "The Sahel is now an epicenter of drug smuggling": https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/africasource/the-sahel-is-now-an-epicenter-of-drug-smuggling-that-is-terrible-news-for-everyone/

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

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/

Ana Aguilera, "The link between terrorism and drug trafficking in Africa," RIET (2022): https://rietjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN_RIET_2022_N7_The-link-between-terrorism-and-drug-trafficking-in-Africa_ana-aguilera_art3.pdf

Al Jazeera, "West Africa's Sahel becoming a drug trafficking corridor, UN warns": https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/19/west-africas-sahel-becoming-a-drug-trafficking-corridor-un-warns