The security situation in West Africa, particularly in the Sahel and its expanding spillover zone toward the Gulf of Guinea, has reached a level at which it can no longer be treated as a distant or localized crisis. As emphasized during the INIS webinar held on 23 December 2025, the region today represents an interconnected security system in which jihadist insurgency, transnational organized crime, political-military instability, and external geopolitical influence reinforce one another. This convergence produces cumulative risks that extend well beyond Africa, generating direct and indirect threats to European security, internal stability, and strategic interests. The discussion was moderated by Darko Trifunović, Director of the Institute for National and International Security (INIS), who framed the debate in a strategic and policy-oriented manner, consistently linking developments in West Africa with their wider implications for Europe and the international security architecture.

The panel brought together regional, academic, and operational expertise. Chris Mensah-Ankrah, a leading expert on African security from Ghana, provided a regional analytical perspective on the evolution of jihadist violence, the erosion of state authority, and the growing entanglement between insurgent groups and organized criminal networks. The structural and governance dimensions of the crisis were addressed by George Oreku, Professor at the Open University of Tanzania, who emphasized the long-term consequences of institutional fragility, demographic pressure, and uneven development across the Sahel and its southern periphery. The operational and military realities on the ground were presented by Dada Echteedee, Major General of the Nigerian Army, who outlined the tactical evolution of jihadist groups, cross-border insurgent mobility, and the concrete challenges faced by national armed forces attempting to contain violence in an increasingly fluid security environment.

In the narrow sense, the core Sahel—Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—remains the epicenter of violence. Armed jihadist groups affiliated with both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have demonstrated a high degree of operational adaptability, exploiting weak governance, porous borders, and vast ungoverned spaces. What distinguishes the current phase of the conflict is not merely the persistence of terrorism, but its transformation into a hybrid system of violence and economic control. Armed groups increasingly function as de facto authorities in peripheral regions, imposing taxation, regulating local markets, controlling artisanal mining zones, and embedding themselves in illicit trade networks. This model allows them to sustain operations despite military pressure, while simultaneously eroding the legitimacy of state institutions and deepening civilian vulnerability.

At the same time, the Sahel must be understood in a broader geographical and strategic sense. Under sustained pressure in the central conflict zone, jihadist and criminal networks are actively expanding southward toward the coastal states of the Gulf of Guinea. Border areas in Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire have become critical zones of infiltration, recruitment, logistics, and financing. This southward shift is not accidental; it reflects a strategic logic aimed at accessing coastal trade routes, population centers, and maritime corridors, thereby connecting Sahel-based violence to global criminal and commercial flows. As a result, the Gulf of Guinea increasingly risks becoming the next frontline rather than a buffer against instability.

Organized crime plays a central role in this transformation and was identified during the webinar as the structural backbone of regional destabilization. The Sahel has evolved into a key transit and consolidation corridor for multiple illicit markets, including drug trafficking, arms smuggling, fuel trafficking, human smuggling, and the illegal exploitation of natural resources. These criminal economies are not parallel to jihadist activity; they are deeply intertwined with it. Criminal revenues finance insurgent operations, while armed groups provide protection, enforcement, and territorial access for traffickers. The outcome is a resilient crime–terror nexus that undermines border control, fuels corruption, and systematically weakens already fragile state structures.

Political instability further accelerates this cycle. Repeated military coups and contested transitions have fractured regional security architectures and reduced the effectiveness of collective responses. New alignments, including alternative regional security frameworks and ad hoc coalitions, have emerged in an environment marked by declining trust in traditional mechanisms. While these realignments are often justified as necessary for restoring sovereignty and order, their practical impact on reducing violence remains limited. In many areas, state control continues to shrink, allowing armed and criminal actors to expand their operational depth.

Within this context, foreign influence has become an increasingly decisive factor. The webinar devoted particular attention to the growing role of Russia in the Sahel, which combines security assistance, political support to ruling elites, and information influence operations. Russian involvement, increasingly institutionalized through structures linked to the Russian Ministry of Defense following the Wagner transition, is presented domestically as an alternative security model to Western engagement. However, evidence discussed during the webinar suggests that this involvement has not produced sustainable stabilization. Instead, it has often prioritized regime protection, narrative control, and geopolitical positioning, while violence against civilians continues to rise and state capacity remains fragile. The accompanying information campaigns, aimed at discrediting Western actors and legitimizing military juntas, further polarize societies and complicate international cooperation.

For Europe, the implications of these dynamics are profound and immediate. The Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea now function as forward nodes in transnational criminal systems that directly supply European markets. Drug trafficking routes through West Africa feed organized crime networks within the EU, strengthening money laundering circuits, corruption risks, and links between African and European criminal groups. These same networks often overlap with migrant smuggling structures, amplifying irregular migration pressures while exposing migrants to extreme exploitation and violence. The humanitarian dimension thus intersects directly with internal security and border management challenges faced by European states.

Terrorism-related risks, while primarily concentrated in Africa, cannot be dismissed as geographically contained. The expansion of jihadist logistics, propaganda, and facilitation networks increases the probability of indirect threat vectors toward Europe, including radicalization dynamics, external plotting, and the use of diasporic or criminal infrastructures for support functions. Even in the absence of large-scale directed attacks, the diffusion of extremist narratives and operational know-how represents a persistent security concern.

Beyond crime and terrorism, the Sahel crisis also carries significant geopolitical consequences for Europe. As external powers compete for influence through security assistance and political alignment, Europe faces a more constrained environment for crisis management, intelligence cooperation, and stabilization initiatives. Fragmentation of partnerships and erosion of trust reduce the effectiveness of coordinated responses precisely at a time when the threat landscape is becoming more complex. Additionally, chronic instability in the Sahel threatens European economic interests by disrupting supply chains, increasing risks for investments and infrastructure projects, and exposing European nationals and companies to kidnapping, coercion, and political leverage.

The central conclusion of the INIS webinar was that the Sahel crisis can no longer be addressed through isolated or sectoral approaches. It is not simply a counterterrorism problem, nor solely a development challenge, nor only a geopolitical competition. It is an integrated threat system in which terrorism, organized crime, political fragility, and external influence mutually reinforce one another. For Europe, this means that the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea must be treated as part of its near-abroad security environment. Failure to address the criminal economies, governance vacuums, and information warfare dynamics emanating from the region will continue to translate into direct security costs for European states, both internally and at their external borders.