Chapter 5 examines the relationship between political violence and transport infrastructure in North and West Africa from 2000-24. The analysis demonstrates a strong correlation between violence and road infrastructure, with violent events occurring more frequently near roads than in other areas of the region. Using disaggregated data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, the chapter shows that 70% of violent events occurred within one kilometre of a road axis. These results are nearly invariant across the main types of roads identified by the Global Roads Inventory Project (GRIP) and the types of violent events identified by ACLED. The second part of the chapter shows that violence has become less clustered near transport infrastructure since 2011, a trend that could be due to the ruralisation of violence (notably close to small urban centres) adopted by Jihadist groups in West Africa. Finally, the chapter confirms that some transport corridors are more violent than others. Violence associated with transport infrastructure is primarily clustered in the Central Sahel, Lake Chad basin, and western Cameroon. Jihadists have used roads to conduct attacks in five ways: by ambushing convoys, kidnapping travellers, using landmines and improvised explosive devices, enforcing blockades, and destroying key infrastructure. These violent incidents fit into a larger strategy to control mobility.
Roads and Conflicts in North and West Africa
Abstract
Violence decreases sharply with distance from roads: 70% of violent events and 65% of fatalities are located within one kilometre of a road.
Violent events have become slightly less clustered near roads since 2011, a trend that could be explained by the ruralisation of violence adopted by jihadist groups in West Africa.
Transport-related violence is very unevenly distributed across the region. The most violent road segments are in Nigeria, northwestern Cameroon, and Central Mali.
Jihadists use several strategies to target transport infrastructure, including attacks on convoys, kidnapping, explosives, blockades, and destruction of key infrastructure.
The clustering of violence near roads is much more consistent across countries than the one between violence and borders, and between violence and cities.
Transport infrastructure is at the very heart of the struggle between state and non-state actors to control mobility.
In August 2024, jihadist militants affiliated with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) ambushed a food supplies convoy traveling between Kantchari and Diapaga in eastern Burkina Faso. Around 150 soldiers and militias and 50 civilians were killed in the attack. The convoy was returning from the Partiaga region, near the W National Park, which has increasingly been used by jihadists as a rear base in their recent expansion towards coastal countries.
This attack is representative of a larger trend in West Africa, in which violent extremist organisations target security forces, self-defence groups, and civilian populations using transport infrastructure. While most attacks take place along roads, airports are targeted too, particularly those that provide supplies to remote military bases. In September 2023, JNIM militants attacked Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) and Wagner positions at Gao Airport using suicide car bombs and commandos tactics. An estimated 19 FAMa soldiers, JNIM suicide bombers, and raiders were killed, eight vehicles burned, and two aircrafts damaged.
This chapter examines the changing geography of such violence over the last 24 years. Using disaggregated data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED, 2024[1]) project, the chapter suggests that violence is indeed more intense near transport infrastructure and has strongly increased since the beginning of the jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel and the Libyan civil wars. Yet, conflict data also show that the relative share of violent events located near roads has declined since 2011, a trend that accompanies the ruralisation of violence observed in West Africa (OECD/SWAC, 2023[2]).
The strong relationship between transport infrastructure and violence is particularly obvious in the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad region, where the most common forms of violence are roadside ambushes, kidnappings, landmines, blockades of cities, and the destruction of the transport infrastructure itself. The main aim of this strategy is to disrupt and control state and civilians’ mobility.
In North and West Africa, violence tends to decrease sharply with distance from roads. Seven out of 10 violent events and 65% of the people killed in the region between 2000 and 2024 were located within one kilometre of a road (Figure 5.1). No secondary peak of activity is observed within the first 10 kilometres away from a road, which roughly corresponds to the area that can potentially be influenced by a transport axis in the region. The sharp distance decay from roads is even more pronounced than the one observed with distance from borders and cities in previous studies (OECD/SWAC, 2022[3]; 2023[2]). These results suggest that the geography of violence follows certain regularities in North and West Africa: people located near roads are far more likely to experience violence than those who live in other areas.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
The strong relationship between violence and transport infrastructure remains valid, regardless of the road category considered: a vast majority of the violent incidents recorded over the last 24 years are near a highway, secondary, tertiary, or local road (Figure 5.2). The more important the road, the more clustered the violence near transport infrastructure: 75% of the violent events are within one kilometre of a highway or a primary road, compared to 72% for secondary roads, and 60% for tertiary roads (Map 5.1, Map 5.2). Using violent events rather than fatalities ensures a higher degree of accuracy in this analysis, since the number of people killed is often subject to debate, while the occurrence of an event is rarely disputed (see Chapter 3).
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
Source: GRIP data (Meijer et al., 2018[4]). Cartography by the authors.
Source: GRIP data (Meijer et al., 2018[4]). Cartography by the authors.
Source: GRIP data (Meijer et al., 2018[4]). Cartography by the authors.
Most of the roads classified as “local” by the Global Roads Inventory Project (GRIP) are located within urban agglomerations (Map 5.3). The high density of such roads in urban settings explains why the percentage of transport-related incidents within one km of road is so high for this category (98%) on Figure 5.2. The only exception is Libya, where “local” roads are present both in large urban regions such as Tripoli, and in rural regions such as the Al Wahat district south of Benghazi. The fact that most of the violence observed in North and West Africa since the end of the Second Libyan war affects rural areas and small towns (OECD/SWAC, 2023[2]) makes the “local” road category of little assistance to this report.
The strong relationship between violence and transport is nearly invariant across the main types of violent events identified by ACLED. In other words, violence occurs at a far greater frequency near roads than anywhere else in the region, irrespective of the nature of violent events observed locally (Figure 5.3). Attacks against civilians are slightly less represented within one kilometre of a road (66%) than battles (72%) and remote violence and explosions (77%). Yet, the pattern observed at the regional level is very consistent across different forms of violence, which is another indication that the proximity to transport infrastructure is a strong predictor of conflict.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
Explosions and remote violence are the type of violence most clustered near roads (Figure 5.3), which is not surprising considering that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) must be placed directly on the road to make the maximum number of victims. Nearly half of the attacks involving IEDs are located within 100 metres of a road. Attacks against civilians occur more frequently at more than one kilometre from a road than battles and explosions, which reflects the fact that human settlements are usually distributed at a distance from roads in rural areas.
While the intensity of violence targeting transport infrastructure has increased tremendously in recent decades, violent events have become less concentrated near roads over time. In the last 15 years, the share of violent events located within one kilometre of a road has declined steadily, from 91% at its peak in 2011 to 59% in 2023 (Figure 5.4). This evolution reflects the current ruralisation of conflict in West Africa, a region where Jihadist insurgents have largely moved away from major urban centres to target rural areas and small towns (OECD/SWAC, 2023[2]).
In 2011, when urban violence reached its peak in West Africa, 72% of violent events were in urban regions, compared to only 18% in 2022. The spatial distribution of violent events according to their distance to cities has followed a similar evolution as the one targeting road infrastructure during the same period. In West Africa, violence was the most clustered near roads in 2011, with 86% of all violent events located within one kilometre of a road, before declining to 61% in 2023 (see Figure 5.4).
As rural areas become more violent, more events occur in areas that are poorly connected to the transport system, and therefore the respective share of incidents located near roads tends to decline. The areas that have experienced a recent increase in violence are located between 1 and 4 kilometres, emphasising that proximity to roads remains key in explaining the distribution of violence across the region.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
Similar results are obtained when a micro-approach to violence is adopted: violent events located within 100 metres of a road represent only 17% of the total in 2023, down from 70% in 2011 (Figure 5.5). The share of violent events located between 100 and 1 000 metres has remained constant, while the proportion of more distant events has increased, from less than 10% at the beginning of the First Libyan Civil War in 2011 to 41% in 2023.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
A rapid distance decay can be observed in all North and West African countries (Figure 5.6), indicating that the tendency for violence to cluster near roads is a regional feature. The clustering of violence near roads is much more consistent across countries than the one between violence and borders (OECD/SWAC, 2022[3]), and between violence and cities (OECD/SWAC, 2023[2]), for which variations were found between Sahelian and other countries. Nothing of the sort is observed with roads. Small or elongated countries like Benin and Togo present the same spatial distribution as large or compact countries such as Libya and Nigeria.
The distance decay is slightly less pronounced in countries that are currently affected by major insurgencies, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, than in peaceful countries such as Senegal, but the difference is rather small. It is in Burkina Faso that violence tends to decay the least rapidly with distance from roads, which reflects the expansion of Jihadist groups in remote regions where there are few roads in the first place, such as the far east bordering Niger and Togo, or the southern border near Côte d’Ivoire. Tunisia is the only country where a significant peak of violence is observed a few kilometres from roads, a specificity explained by the fact that the few violent events experienced in the country have usually occurred in rural regions where roads are quite distant from each other.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
The robust relationship between violence and transport infrastructure observed at the regional and national levels masks substantial disparities within countries. Some segments of the road network are significantly more affected by violence than others. To identify the most dangerous roads in North and West Africa, the report first maps the locations of all battles, remote violence and explosions, and violence against civilians that occurred between 2000 and 2024. Each violent event is then assigned to the nearest road segment. Only events for which the exact co-ordinates are known with great precision are included (a geoprecision code of 1 according to ACLED, see Chapter 3).
This approach reveals that the highest levels of transport-related violence are concentrated in western Cameroon, Nigeria, and central Mali (Map 1.2). The 350-kilometre ring road linking the regional centre of Bamenda to Kumbo and Wum in the Anglophone Northwest region of Cameroon is the most violent road in North and West Africa, with 757 recorded events since 2018 (Map 5.4). The intensity of violence is attributed to the conflict between the Cameroonian government and the Ambazonian separatists.
In North Africa, the most violent road segments are located within the urban agglomeration of Tripoli, which has recorded up to 539 violent events since the start of the First Libyan Civil War in 2011. Capturing Tripoli was the goal of the Western Libya campaign launched by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in 2019 against the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
In the Central Sahel, the National Road 16 (RN16) between Mopti/Sévaré and Gao is by far the most violent transport axis, with 433 events recorded since the beginning of the civil war in Mali in 2012 (Map 5.5). RN16 is the only paved road connecting eastern Mali to the rest of the country and has long represented a key logistical corridor for security forces intervening in the Gourma, Adrar of the Ifoghas, and Ménaka regions. Large military bases were built in Sévaré and Gao by the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), and long military convoys were a regular sight in the region for more than a decade. In recent years, Malian forces and their Russian mercenaries have also been repeatedly ambushed along this road, such as in September 2023, when JNIM militants detonated a bridge and ambushed a convoy near Agoudoud. Twenty-two people were killed in the fighting that followed. In reprisal, FAMa and Wagner executed at least twelve people from the Arab, Fulani, and Tuareg communities traveling between Doro and Gossi.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included. Road segments must be close to at least one violent event to be included
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
South of Gao, National Road 17 (RN17) leading to the Nigerien border, and National Road 20 (RN20) heading toward Ménaka have experienced 177 and 139 events respectively since the Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP), formerly known as Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (IGSS), intensified its activities in the region in 2017. South of the Malian border, all the roads leading to the town of Djibo in Burkina Faso have experienced high levels of violence due to the blockade established by JNIM and its allies in 2020 and 2022. Further east, National Road 4 (N4) between Fada N’Gourma and the border post of Kantchari is also among the most dangerous roads in the country. In September 2021, JNIM militants ambushed a logistics convoy near Doufouanou, killing six gendarmes and one Volunteer for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP).
In the Sahara, 232 violent events were recorded since 2012 near National Road 18 (RN18), which connects the Niger Bend to Kidal in the Adrar of the Ifoghas. Since the Tuareg rebellion of 2012 started in Kidal, intense fighting between rebels, jihadists, government forces, and their respective militias has occurred along this road corridor leading to the military base of Tessalit and the Algerian border at Bordj Badji Mokhtar.
The longest segments of dangerous roads are in Nigeria (Map 5.6). The roads closest to the largest number of violent events connect Maiduguri in Borno State to Damaturu and Potiskum (A3, with 542 events recorded since 2010), and Maiduguri to Biu and Bama (684 events recorded since 2010; see Map 5.7). Violent incidents targeting security forces and/or civilians travelling on these major road corridors occur with alarming frequency (ACSS, 2020[5]). Between January 2023 and June 2024, 665 people were killed between Maiduguri and Bama, in 133 incidents.
Note: Only events for which the co-ordinates are precisely known are included. Road segments must be close to at least one violent event to be included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location is known are included.
Source: Authors based on GRIP (Meijer et al., 2018[4]) and ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
Further north, in Niger, the road between N’Guigmi and Zinder through Diffa (RN1) has experienced 212 events since 2018. The intensity of violence recorded along these transport axes is attributed to the insurgency waged by Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS, often referred to as Boko Haram) and its splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP): hardly any violent events were recorded before JAS started its campaign of violence in 2009.
Jihadists affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State use roads to conduct attacks in at least five ways in the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad region. First, jihadists ambush military and civilian convoys and travellers in attacks designed to simultaneously kill rivals and challengers, claim control over transport routes, discourage military patrols, and intimidate civilians. Jihadist groups also target travellers for hostage-taking, focusing on ordinary people, traders, local officials, or foreign tourists. Such kidnappings allow jihadists to make political demands, extort ransoms, and inflict fear. In addition, jihadists employ landmines and IEDs to kill travellers, disrupt commerce, and deter military incursions into areas where armed groups hold sway. Jihadists also exert control over roads to enforce blockades and other forms of economic warfare on major towns, such as Timbuktu in Mali and Djibo in Burkina Faso. Finally, jihadists destroy key infrastructure, such as bridges, thereby weaponising blocked routes against communities or security forces. These road-based attacks are mutually compatible and can fit into a larger strategy by the region’s many combatants to control the mobility of their opponents and civilians.
Ambushes on the road
Sahelian governments often deploy military convoys to guarantee the security of their troops when travelling over long distances, supplying remote regions with military equipment and food, or escorting civilians away from conflict areas. Insurgents have adapted to this practice by launching increasingly frequent and co-ordinated attacks against such convoys in the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad region, along major corridors and smaller rural roads. Ambushes help to compensate for insurgencies’ smaller manpower in comparison to security forces. While each ambush inflicts casualties, it also sows fear, complicates the security forces’ ability to plan, and enables insurgents to capture weapons, vehicles, and materiel. Additionally, when conducted on roads, ambushes disrupt the security forces’ efforts to control vast spaces through patrols.
Ambushes were very uncommon in North and West Africa until the early 2010s: only 104 such events were reported for the whole region between 2000 and 2011 (Figure 5.7). In the last 14 years, ambushes have steadily increased, reaching 269 individual events in 2023 and resulting in 4 024 fatalities. The increase is even more dramatic in Sahelian countries, where ambushes were virtually unknown until recently: only 31 ambushes were reported by ACLED in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger between 2000 and 2015, compared to 497 recorded between 2016 and 2023. Over the last 24 years, attacks against convoys have been among the most lethal types of events, with an average of 4.0 victims per event in North and West Africa and 5.2 victims per event in the Sahel.
While ACLED data do not indicate the perpetrator of an attack, except for violence against civilians, the description accompanying each event can be used to identify the initiator of an ambush against a convoy. For example, if the description indicates that “presumed Ansaroul Islam (JNIM) militants ambushed a gendarmerie and volunteer fighter (VDP) escorted convoy on the road between Boukouma and Gorgadji” (event #BFO5236), one can reasonably conclude that the ambush was initiated by a militant group rather than the government. The fact that an actor is identified as the initiator of an attack does not mean that it will have the upper hand during the fighting. Numerous examples exist of ambushes that were successfully repelled, such as in October 2023, when an attack on a military convoy in the region of Boni was repelled by Malian armed forced, who killed several JNIM militants and seized weapons and communication equipment (ACLED event #MLI30970). This approach suggests that militants initiate most attacks against convoys in the region (87.3%), while government forces usually respond to this type of violence. In less than 6% of the 1 142 events identified as an ambush, the identity of the actors in conflict is unclear, irrelevant, or neither militants nor the government are involved.
Note: Sahelian countries include Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger. Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town is known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
In the Central Sahel, attacks against convoys are clustered along a few road corridors. In Mali, the largest number of events is recorded along RN16 between Mopti in the Inner Delta and Gao, and along the RN17 between Gao and the Nigerien border (Map 5.8). Attacks against convoys frequently occur in sparsely populated rural regions where convoys are vulnerable, such as around Boni in the Gourma Mounts, where JNIM conducted nine attacks against Malian forces and Wagner mercenaries between 2019 and 2024.
Further north, convoys travelling on the RN18 and RN19 from the Niger River to the Adrar of the Ifoghas and the Algerian border have also been repeatedly targeted. The worst attack took place in July 2024, when a convoy of Malian and Wagner forces was ambushed by fighters from the Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad near Tin Zaouatene. During the three days of fighting, the rebels claimed to have killed 84 mercenaries and 47 FAMa soldiers and destroyed many armoured vehicles and weapons.
Further south, ambushes against convoys are particularly numerous between Ouagadougou and Djibo (N22), between Djibo and Dori, and between Ouagadougou and Ouahigouya (N2), due to the expansion of the Burkinabe insurgency to most northern regions of the country. All roads leading to the eastern peripheries of Burkina Faso are also subject to ambushes, particularly the crucial commercial axes between Fada N’Gourma and Kantchari, which lead to Niamey in Niger, and the corridor that runs through Bittou towards the Gulf of Guinea.
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town is known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
In the Lake Chad region, a striking correspondence between the road network and attacks against convoys is evident (Map 5.9). From January 2018 to June 2024, this type of violence has tended to be concentrated on the Nigerian side of the border, where it disrupts the movement of the security forces between towns, outposts, and bases, rendering operations more difficult across entire theatres. Such ambushes were one reason government forces adopted a “super camps” strategy in 2019 in northeastern Nigeria. This strategy, which prioritises the defence of big towns, has led to a substantial decrease in the number of casualties in the rank of the Nigerian military and the number of attacks conducted against JAS and ISWAP by government forces. However, it has also allowed insurgents greater freedom of movement in rural areas and contributed to an increase in the number of civilian casualties outside fortified camps (Prieto-Curiel, Walther and Davies, 2023[6]).
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town is known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
On-road ambushes also complicate the movements of politicians and security personnel, while giving insurgents opportunities for propaganda activities and undermining development initiatives. In September 2020, for example, Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum’s convoy was attacked by ISWAP militants at Barwati, a village on the road between the towns of Monguno and Baga (ACLED event # NIG18324). The attack appeared intended to not just kill or intimidate the governor, but also discourage efforts – which the governor was spearheading – to resettle people who had earlier been displaced from Baga. The governor’s convoy was ambushed again two days later, with insurgents first using an IED-laden donkey in the road to halt and distract the convoy, and then emerging from the bush to attack (BBC, 2020[7]).
Kidnappings on the road
Abductions and forced disappearances have been central to the operations, financing, and terrorist character of several major insurgent groups in West Africa, where this activity is much more common than in North Africa (Figure 5.8). South of the Sahara, kidnappings have remained very rare until the late 2010s: fewer than 50 cases were recorded annually for the entire region from 2000-2015. The expansion of the Malian conflict and the Boko Haram insurgency have led to a twenty-fold increase in the number of events observed from 2017-23. While more than 40% of all the kidnappings observed in West Africa since 2009 are in Nigeria, Sahelian countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger (and Cameroon) are increasingly concerned with this type of violence. In October 2024, for example, Burkinabe lawyers Gontran Somé and Christian Kaboré were abducted from their vehicle on National Road 10 (N10) between Dédougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. The militants affiliated with Al Qaeda responsible for this abduction released them after 26 days of captivity.
Note: *2024 data are estimates based on a doubling of events recorded through 30 June 2024.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
A kidnapping economy, revolving around capturing and ransoming European tourists, provided a funding boon to Jihadist groups in the Sahel-Sahara between the early 2000s and mid-2010s. The most spectacular of these kidnappings was conducted by the Salafist Group for Predication and Combat, who abducted 32 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in 2003 (Walther and Christopoulos, 2015[8]). An estimated USD 125 million was paid by European countries to liberate hostages captured by Al Qaeda and its affiliates from 2008 to 2014 (Callimachi, 2014[9]). This lucrative strategy fuelled the expansion of Jihadi groups from Algeria to the Sahara-Sahel and led to the total collapse of the tourism industry.
In absence of Western hostages, Jihadi militants turned to local targets and started abducting a growing number of civilians from the region. As a result, the kidnapping economy has largely moved south in the last decade (Map 5.10). In the north of the Sahelian region, kidnapping is still mainly associated with roads and major circulation axis: the RN33 north of Markala, the Niger Bend, and the RN17 between Gao and Ansongo. Further south, the kidnapping economy has spread to most rural areas and affects a large and nearly continuous region from the south of the Wagadou forest in Mali to the W National Park at the border between Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger. The main hotspots include the Dogon Country east of Mopti, the northern half of Burkina around Djibo and Dori, and the region of Bittou near the border with Benin and Togo.
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town are known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
In Nigeria, the kidnapping of the Chibok girls in 2014 made JAS an international sensation. Since then, the group and its offshoots have conducted numerous other mass kidnappings in exchange for ransom. The fact that the media reports upon which most ACLED events are recorded rarely distinguish between the various factions of the insurgency does not allow to determine to which extend ISWAP has established a more conciliatory approach to civilians than JAS, as suggested by ICG (ICG, 2024[10]). Kidnapping is widespread everywhere JAS and ISWAP are operating.
In recent years, JAS has multiplied the number of abductions and forced disappearances in the plains north of their stronghold of the Mandara mountains (Map 5.11). The strongest concentration of such events is recorded in the Mayo-Sava Department of Cameroon, northwest of Maroua, near Banki. In this region, JAS militants kidnap civilians indiscriminately, including farmers on their way to the fields, school children, travellers, shepherds, or villagers collecting wood. About a third of the events involve abductions of girls and women, who can be forced to enter coerced marriages with fighters. Civilians are usually released unharmed shortly after their motorbikes, food items, phones, and animals have been looted, or ransom has been paid. A similar strategy was implemented in the extreme tip of Cameroon close to the shores of the Lake, where JAS has consolidated its hold.
In the Diffa region, west of Lake Chad, where ISWAP is allegedly the strongest, conflict data suggest that civilians are frequently abducted all along the Niger-Nigeria border. While Nigerien and Nigerian fighters take part in the attacks, cross-border raids are co-ordinated from across the Komadougou River in Nigeria (Mohammed, 2020[11]). The patterns are very similar to the ones observed further south with JAS: pastoralists, women and children, students, customary chiefs, technicians, and travellers are abducted as they work or travel across the region and usually released shortly afterwards. Very little information is available as to where exactly the victims are taken. Since the victims appear to be mostly ordinary people and the ransom demands target their families and communities, the kidnappers might be holding the victims within the Diffa region or around Lake Chad.
Abductions and forced disappearances are the only type of violence studied in this chapter for which the Nigerian side of the border is less affected than the Cameroonian, Chadian, and Nigerien side. This discrepancy illustrates the versatile role played by international boundaries in the region and the fact that violence observed in Chad, Cameroon and Niger is a spillover from the Nigerian conflict. On the Nigeria-Cameroon border, the Mandara mountains have been used as a refuge by JAS for more than a decade (Seignobos, 2014[12]), from which kidnappings can be conducted in the surrounding plains. No such refuge can be found in the Diffa region. JAS and/or ISWAP tend to commit more kidnappings on the Nigerien side of the border even though the response to the insurgency was rather similar in Niger and Nigeria (state of emergency, forced displacements, bans on motorcycles and on the fish and pepper trade).
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town are known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
The success of kidnapping has inspired bandits and others to replicate the mass kidnapping tactic, contributing to overall instability in northwest Nigeria (ACLED and GITOC, 2024[13]; Ojewale, 2024[14]). Many high-profile kidnappings have involved attacks on fixed targets such as schools, but the ability to use both roads and offroad mobility has been key to successfully perpetrating kidnappings and then hiding the hostages. Not just roads are affected. In March 2022, a train carrying nearly 1 000 people travelling between Abuja and Kaduna was attacked and derailed by a militia at Katari, Kaduna State (ACLED event # NIG24245). Between 8 and 9 civilians were killed, 22 to 41 others were wounded and at least 68 were abducted. Abductees were released from June through October, sometimes in return for the release of the children of the assailants.
At other times, kidnappings have targeted road travellers directly, a major trend in Mali and Burkina Faso. In April 2024, presumed JNIM fighters kidnapped an estimated 110 civilians travelling on two Bamako-bound passenger buses on RN15 between Bankass and Bandiagara. The Jihadists blocked a bridge, forced passengers to descend, separated men and women, and then reloaded the buses and forced the drivers to take the group to a wooded area. Some hostages, hailing from communities that had signed accords with JNIM, were released (Maillard, 2024[15]). The kidnapping, one of many in the zone, evoked substantial protests from locals, demanding that authorities do more to secure RN15 and to free the hostages. Notably, protesters temporarily closed the road in an act of “civil disobedience” (Sahelien, 2024[16]), highlighting how road closures were a tool for multiple conflict parties.
Another example of how a road-based kidnapping can have serious political effects was the March 2020 Jihadist abduction of Soumaïla Cissé, at the time Mali’s most prominent opposition politician, while he was campaigning in the Timbuktu region in the lead-up to legislative elections. Cissé’s release was eventually negotiated, along with several long-held European hostages, in October 2020, in what became the most high-profile prisoner exchange in Mali’s history. Cissé’s kidnapping was also a vivid illustration that no one was safe on the road in Mali’s conflict zones, and that normal electoral politics was being severely disrupted by violence.
Remote explosive, landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices
Remote explosive, landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) can cause considerable disruption on government forces by killing soldiers, destroying equipment, and creating a pervasive sense of insecurity that hinders the morale of security forces. In addition, IEDs can severely affect the provision of health and education services, and disrupt economic activities, by discouraging agricultural producers from exploiting their fields, and killing traders going to markets.
The use of these types of violent devices has increased during the civil wars in Libya (2011, 2014-20) and since the end of the 2010s in West Africa (w 5.9). More than 100 such events have been recorded every year in Mali since 2021 and in Burkina Faso since 2022. In September 2022, for example, a military-escorted convoy hit an improvised explosive device (IED) likely planted by JNIM militants in the village of Mentao off N22 in Burkina Faso, killing 35 civilians (ACLED event #BFO7972). Explosive devices are also widely used in northern Nigeria, east and west of Niger and in northwestern Cameroon.
Note: *2024 data are estimates based on a doubling of events recorded through June 30.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]). Data is publicly available.
Because remote explosives, landmines and IEDs must be placed close to vehicles and travellers, a strong correspondence is observed between the locations of the incidents and the structure of the road network. In the Central Sahel, the attacks follow the layout of the main and secondary roads (Map 5.12). While a few locations, such as Kidal, Boni, and Djibo are repeatedly hit, the general pattern of violence is made of hundreds of isolated incidents spread across the region. The RN16 between Douentza and Hombori (147 km) was attacked on 11 separate locations between January 2018 and June 2024, while the RN20 between Ansongo and Menaka (220 km) was attacked on 9 separate locations.
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town are known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
Landmines planted alongside roads have remained a significant problem in the Lake Chad region, particularly across the Nigerian state of Borno (Map 5.13). In May 2024, eleven members of the state-backed Civilian Joint Task Force vigilante group were killed on the Dikwa-Gamboru highway, while five civilians died after their vehicle drove over a landmine planted by ISWAP militants on the Maiduguri-Monguno road near Gajiram. Although the security forces claimed that the IED and landmine attacks were a result of ISWAP taking casualties and growing weaker and more desperate, civilians recounted that the mines were stoking fear and undermining commerce and commuting in the state. Security source gave insight into the interaction between bad roads and the challenge of landmines: “Due to the poor state of road infrastructure, it takes a long time to patrol and scan for mines, instead of a few hours. These criminals take advantage of the cratered loose sands to easily plant mines at night” (Haruna, 2024[17]). Even on their own, then, IEDs and landmines on roads can cause death, destruction, fear, and expense.
Note: Only violent events for which the exact location or the nearest town are known are included.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
Blockades
Insurgents in the Sahel, particularly JNIM, have blockaded both large and small towns. Targets of such blockades include Farabougou and Timbuktu in Mali, and Djibo in Burkina Faso. Blockades fit into a larger pattern of economic warfare by JNIM that aims at disrupting state forces and controlling civilian populations. In addition to causing tremendous hardship for civilian populations, blockades “fragilizes relations between the population and authorities due to the latter’s inability to provide basic services with the potential of sparking civil unrest” (Nsaibia, 2023[18]). JNIM’s blockades have sometimes lasted for months, although JNIM will temporarily or permanently abandon a blockade if it meets substantial resistance or if it achieves the goal of rendering the population more compliant.
Djibo offers an instructive case study of a long-running blockade. For several months in 2020 and then again beginning in early 2022, JNIM and its allies in Ansaroul Islam worked to isolate the administrative capital of Burkina Faso’s Soum Province. The blockades came amid regular attacks in Soum, which produced mass insecurity and displacement, swelling Djibo’s population from an estimated 60,000 people in 2019 to 350 000 by the time the 2022 siege began (Faivre, 2022[19]). The siege of Djibo was accompanied by blockades and economic warfare against numerous other towns in Burkina Faso such as Arbinda, located 89 kilometres east of Djibo (Amnesty International, 2023[20]). These events contributed to make Djibo the most violent location in Burkina Faso, with 149 violent events and 563 fatalities observed from January 2017 to June 2024, against 64 events and 293 fatalities in Arbinda.
Two major roads intersect in Djibo. The first is the N22, which runs west from Djibo and then turns north and into Mali, and proceeds south from Djibo, connecting the town to Ouagadougou, some 200 kilometres away. The 14th Inter-Arms Regiment, created in 2020 to respond to the degradation of the security situation in Soum Province, is headquartered a short distance west of town, along the N22. The second major road is the R6, which runs east from Djibo to Dori, another major northern town and the administrative capital of the Sahel region of which Soum is a part (Map 5.14). JNIM and Ansaroul Islam proved particularly effective at controlling the N22 between Djibo and Bourzanga, some 53 kilometres south.
The blockades were enforced through a combination of measures. The insurgents killed both prominent people and ordinary people who travelled by road, including Djibo’s grand imam, kidnapped while returning from Ouagadougou to Djibo in August 2020 and then found dead several days later (Jeune Afrique, 2020[21]). To cut the city from its hinterland, they also destroyed bridges, stopped and threatened drivers, and ambushed convoys that could have provided military and food supplies or allowed civilians to escape (Laplace, 2022[22]). By late 2022, the roads became so dangerous that Djibo could only be resupplied by air, suggesting that even significant towns may be left quite vulnerable to blockades.
The blockades of Djibo have had profound political effects in Burkina Faso, especially on two occasions. First, in mid-2020, the government of then-President Roch Kaboré reportedly brokered a secret deal with Jihadists that involved a release of prisoners, freer movement for Jihadists into Djibo, a lifting of the blockade, and peaceful conduct of the presidential elections in November 2020 (Mednick, 2021[23]). The combination of Jihadist pressure on Djibo and the political imperative for Kaboré of holding elections thus resulted in negotiations and substantial concessions to Jihadists. The breakthrough proved temporary, however: in January 2022, once election season passed, Kaboré was overthrown in a military coup and the idea of negotiating with the Jihadists disappeared.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
Second, in September 2022, a massive 207-vehicle convoy carrying supplies for Djibo, and escorted by the military, was attacked by JNIM at Gaskindé, approximately 26 kilometres south of Djibo along the N22 road (van der Weide, 2022[24]). The massive ambush, according to one eyewitness, lasted several hours, involving both motorbikes and trucks with mounted machine guns. A drone strike helped to staunch the losses, but the military lost 27 soldiers amid varying reports of how many civilian deaths occurred. The attack was not only a devastating loss for the military and a blow to the hopes of desperate civilians in Djibo, but also became a trigger for the second military coup of 2022, which occurred just days after the Gaskindé attack as frustrated soldiers lashed out at their superiors (TV5 Monde, 2022[25]).
Destroying road infrastructure and bridges
Although mobility is essential to insurgents as to state forces, Jihadists sometimes strategically destroy infrastructure to disrupt state forces’ mobility, punish populations, or enhance their own advantages in terms of off-road mobility. Destroying transport infrastructure contributes to the increasing isolation of some cities, which find themselves cut off from the rest of the country. This strategy has major implications for the spatial distribution of violence since people living in small towns and rural areas are significantly more likely to experience violence than those living in major urban centres (OECD/SWAC, 2023[2]).
Recent studies also suggest that violence is strongly associated with the number of connections a city has to other urban agglomerations and how much time it takes to travel between them. In Africa, people living in cities with limited connections and fewer accessible routes to other cities experience violence at a rate four to five times higher than those in more central, well-connected cities (Prieto-Curiel and Menezes, 2024[26]). This trend has intensified in recent years, indicating that violence against civilians is becoming increasingly prevalent in isolated regions. By specifically targeting transport infrastructure, violent extremist organisations strategically exploit urban isolation to their advantage: remote areas provide these groups with easier protection and a population that can be more readily dominated. Additionally, poor accessibility means that state authorities have limited resources and capacity to control these regions effectively or intervene quickly when an attack is occurring (Prieto-Curiel and Menezes, 2024[26]).
Destroying bridges seems to be the surest way to bring local traffic to a halt, especially in mountainous or hilly regions where off-road mobility is difficult. This is the strategy used by Jihadist groups in the Dogon Country east of Mopti, where a rocky plateau and a spectacular cliff limit the number of alternative roads that can be used by security forces and civilians between the Inner Delta of the River Niger in the west and the Séno-Gondo, a sandy plain that extends towards Burkina Faso in the east. This region has been one of the most violent theatres of the Sahelian conflict, with violence concentrating along the RN15 linking Sévaré with Bandiagara and Bankass (Map 5.15).
Jihadists destroyed a bridge at Songho in March 2020 (Malijet, 2020[27]) and another bridge at Yawakanda in August 2021 on the RN15, a few kilometres from Bandiagara. The latter act of destruction occurred just two days after the anti-Jihadist, Dogon hunter association Dan Na Ambassagou had met with local communities. Those communities had concluded survival pacts with Jihadists, and Dan Na Ambassagou was apparently lobbying villagers to dissolve the pacts. The destruction of the bridge thus came as apparent revenge, and a way of isolating and punishing the villagers of Yawakanda for interacting with Dan Na Ambassagou. Villagers rebuilt part of the bridge, but heavy trucks still had difficulty passing (Studio Tamani, 2022[28]). The bridges at Songho and Yawakanda were not fully rebuilt until 2022, with the assistance of the United Nations (MINUSMA, 2022[29]).
The development of religious extremism is not the only cause of violence in Central Mali. In the Séno-Gondo plain, east of the Bandiagara Cliff, violence is also fuelled by ethnic rivalries between Dogon and Fulani. In 2019, Dan Na Ambassagou killed 160 Fulani in the villages of Ogossagou and Welingara, south of Bankass, in what remains one of the worst massacres of the last 20 years in Mali. The expansion of the Fulani in the 19th century led Dogon farmers to withdraw from their villages on the plain and adopt defensive settlements in the Bandiagara Cliff. In the 20th century, the descendants of these farmers have moved eastwards towards the Séno-Gondo plain and have given rise to an agricultural front that they regard as their original lands. New crops have replaced the pastures of the Fulani, whose way of life is now threatened by a lack of investment in the pastoral sector and recurring droughts. This explosive context encourages ethnic militias such as Dan Na Ambassagou to capitalize on the fear of religious extremism to promote their local objectives.
Source: Authors based on ACLED (2024[1]) data available through 30 June 2024. Data is publicly available.
The relationship between transport infrastructure and violence is very clear in North and West Africa. The road infrastructure, especially, attracts a disproportionate share of violent events and violence tends to decrease sharply as one moves away from transport corridors. This relationship remains largely invariant across the main types of roads and violent events observed in the region over the last 24 years. Violence clusters near roads both in the region in aggregate and among the 21 countries considered in this study.
Transport-related violence takes various forms in the areas most affected by conflicts. In both the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad basin, IEDs have the closest relationship with the road network, due to the nature of the remote explosives used in the attacks. A close correspondence is also observed between ambushes against convoys and the proximity to roads in rural areas, due to the opportunity of attacking mobile forces where they are the most vulnerable. Kidnappings have the most complex relationship with mobility, since they occur both along transport corridors and in rural areas where Jihadist groups have implemented a predatory economy.
The study suggests that the patterns of violence observed in North and West Africa can be explained by the duality of the transport infrastructure: roads are both a target and a facilitator of violence (see Chapter 2). This is particularly visible in the Sahara and Sahel, where remote violence, and violence against civilians tend to aggregate near roads because this is where insurgents can most easily attack military forces and civilians. Violence also tends to be associated with roads because transport corridors constitute the preferred way to project military power from fixed military bases and securitised cities. For these reasons, transport infrastructure is at the very heart of the struggle between state and non-state actors to control mobility. These results are consistent with earlier studies that suggested that the only feasible way to wage war in a sparsely populated region like the Sahara and Sahel is by controlling the population rather than holding territory (OECD/SWAC, 2014[30]).
Jihadist groups are well on the way to achieving this objective in Central Mali, western Niger, and much of Burkina Faso. By multiplying the number of attacks along and near roads, JNIM, ISSP, JAS and ISWAP have considerably reduced the ability of government forces to respond to the security needs of the local populations in a timely manner. By making movement increasingly dangerous, they have also forced the Sahelian armies to travel in heavily armoured convoys between fortified camps. This evolution has left vast swathes of the countryside in the hands of Jihadist groups, who can then control rural populations without being present everywhere at once. This strategy explains why jihadism does not spread from the Sahel towards the Gulf of Guinea through a unified “front” but through the gradual isolation of rural areas. This process, observed in multiple regions simultaneously, is highly dependent on local factors that are ruthlessly exploited by Jihadists (Chapter 4).
The impressive concentration of violence observed near transport infrastructure in West Africa does not just reflect the current intensification and expansion of armed conflicts in the region. It is also shaped by the architecture of the road network itself. As noted in Chapter 2, the West African road network is far less dense, less extensive, and less well maintained that the one in North Africa. Poor accessibility has major consequences on the geography of violence: most attacks take place near roads because government forces and civilians have simply no alternative but to use the few transport corridors available to them. The sparsity of roads also means that cities that depend on a single transport corridor can easily be cut off from the national network by imposing a blockade or destroying a bridge, as in Djibo and Bandiagara.
Ultimately, the unprecedented levels of violence recorded near roads in West Africa are a manifestation of a deeper, structural problem that can only be addressed by developing or rehabilitating a much more cohesive transport network at the regional level. Such network would allow security forces to reach many places simultaneously instead of constraining their movement to just a few corridors along which they are particularly vulnerable. An extensive transport network would also make it much harder for numerically small armed groups to assert power on rural populations by controlling their mobility. It would contribute to reinforce national cohesion and regional integration.
Integrate spatial data into policies
This study concludes a cycle of three OECD/SWAC flagship reports dedicated to better understanding the geography of armed conflict in North and West Africa. The analysis of 70 000 events having caused the death of more than 233 000 people over the last 24 years strongly suggest that the spatial evolution of armed conflicts is shaped by three fundamental elements: cities, roads, and borders. These elements are more than just points, lines, and areas on a map. They are inextricably linked: cities are the source or origin of human and physical networks tied together by roads within a particular region or country symbolised by its borders. Taken together, they shape the spatial dynamics observed in North and West Africa. Cites attract violence in specific locations because they represent a symbol of state authority and a military target that armed groups must conquer if they wish to overthrow the central government. Capital cities, in particular, play a strategic role in civil wars due to their large concentration of troops, institutions, formal enterprises, media, and other key infrastructure. As discussed in this report, roads also tend to attract violence because they organise flows of soldiers, weapons and refugees across countries. Finally, borders tend to be more violent than other regions because they provide the territorial framework upon which state power derives its legitimacy to wage war.
The fact that violence tends to strongly be associated with cities, roads, and borders (Figure 5.10) suggests that the geography of armed conflicts in North and West Africa is far from random. On the contrary, there are regularities in the way violence is spatially and temporally distributed across countries and subnational regions (Walther, Radil and Russell, 2024[31]). Future studies should build on these regularities to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the trajectory of armed conflicts. The work conducted by OECD/SWAC on the geography of armed conflict in North and West Africa shows that by taking into account a few key geographical elements, it is possible to make sense of a very large number of often contradictory events.
In the same vein, the relationships observed between violence and cities, borders and roads can be used to anticipate the future evolution of the conflicts currently ravaging the region. Indeed, it is more than likely that regions close to towns, borders and roads will be the first to be affected by the expansion of the Sahelian conflict towards the Gulf of Guinea. This also suggests that these areas are essential ones that should receive attention from policymakers and other stakeholders interested in building a durable peace in the region.
The commonalities observed in North and West Africa should be central in moving toward more nuanced understandings of the ever-evolving geographies of conflict among policy makers. In a region confronted by rapidly evolving conflicts, mapping where violence emerges, spreads and eventually dissipates should help design space-based policies that are mindful of the local factors that encourage people to turn to political violence. If conflicts tend to be shaped by their proximity to cities, borders, and roads, then policy responses should be similarly tailored to the context in which violence develops. As noted in the predecessor reports to this one, the region’s violence is both a consequence of uneven state-building projects that have left many places behind, and a barrier to additional developmental work aimed at building a peaceful, prosperous future (OECD/SWAC, 2022[3]; 2023[2]). Understanding the local factors that explain how violence has emerged in specific places is a necessary first step in ending the cycles of violence that
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