The Global Advisor Kidnap & extortive crime | January 2025 Africa
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Nigeria saw a 16% increase in reported kidnaps in the last quarter of 2024 relative to the same period in 2023 as criminal and Islamist extremist groups continued to engage in the crime. Northern states remained the hotspot, though incidents occurred frequently throughout the country. Kidnappers over this last quarter demonstrated a continued intent and capability to target commercial personnel, including foreign nationals, across a wide range of sectors, such as mining, oil and gas, manufacturing and agriculture. Sophisticated gangs will continue to demonstrate a willingness to confront security forces in operations they view as high risk, yet high reward, including abductions of foreign nationals. The detention threat to mining employees in Mali increased over the last quarter of 2024, as the junta has increased its reliance on arbitrary detentions of mining employees. Such detentions formed part of the junta’s strategy to enforce compliance with the 2023 Mining Code and demand tax arrears. The implementation of the Code will remain selective and opaque, and further arbitrary detentions of foreign and local employees of mining companies are likely in the coming months. Meanwhile, Islamist extremist groups such as Nusrat al-Islam (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), alongside criminal actors, have continued to exploit the permissive security environment, to generate revenue and assert territorial control through kidnapping. Pirates in East and West African waters remained active as seasonal weather conditions favoured their maritime kidnap operations. Off the coast of Somalia , the end of the monsoon season in November, corresponding to more favourable sea conditions in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, coincided with an increase in pirate activity.
Somalian pirates hijacked a Chinese-owned fishing vessel and abducted 18 of its crew members in early December. In the Gulf of Guinea, the Harmattan season (October-March), characterised by reduced visibility at sea due to Saharan dust, also allowed pirates to operate more freely, with Control Risks recording multiple abduction attempts and a successful maritime kidnap over the past quarter. The number of reported kidnaps in Cameroon also increased by more than tenfold in the last quarter of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023. Incidents occurred frequently in Cameroon’s historical hotspots, such as the Far North region, where Islamist extremist groups operate, and the anglophone regions (South-West and North- West regions), where anglophone separatist groups continue to depend on the crime to fund their insurgency. The crime has also become entrenched in areas not historically affected by kidnapping, namely the North and Adamawa regions, where financially motivated criminals have escalated their operations.
72 % of abductions happened in transit/outdoors 85 % of abductions resolved in less than 8 days 21 sectors affected
Key developments October to December 2024
Reported kidnaps across Sub- Saharan Africa rose by 19% in the last quarter of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023, driven largely by increases in Nigeria and Cameroon. Nigeria continued to record the vast majority of kidnaps in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, with kidnap gangs demonstrating a continued intent and capability to target commercial personnel across a wide range of sectors. The detention threat to mining employees in Mali increased over the last quarter of 2024. Criminal and Islamist extremist
groups in Mali continued to pose a kidnap threat to a wider range of commercial personnel.
Permissive seasonal weather conditions in the waters of East and West Africa allowed pirate groups to operate with relative impunity over the last quarter of 2024. Cameroon continued to see frequent reported kidnaps across all of its multiple hotspots, driven by the activity of a wide range of threat actors.
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