The Risk of Kidnap in West Africa
In early 2025, we have seen a spate of kidnappings driven by IS across its areas of influence in West Africa. What was once characterised by opportunistic banditry has evolved into sophisticated criminal enterprises with established pricing models, professional negotiation protocols, and complex cross-border operations. For security professionals and corporations operating in these environments, understanding this evolution is crucial for effective risk management.
In just a six-week period spanning January and February 2025, we have witnessed a series of precisely coordinated kidnappings spanning multiple countries: an Austrian national in northern Niger, a Spanish national near the Algeria-Mali border, four Moroccan truck drivers in the Burkina Faso-Niger border region, and two Chinese nationals working for a major petroleum corporation in northeastern Niger. These weren't random acts of opportunity - they represented a carefully orchestrated campaign with ransom demands ranging from 100 to 250 million CFA francs per hostage (around ￡130,000-￡320,000).
The geographical spread of these incidents reveals another crucial insight: the various IS branches are no longer confining themselves to their recent operational areas. They're expanding through strategic partnerships with local criminal networks, effectively creating franchises that extend their reach while maintaining operational efficiency. This expansion model mirrors legitimate business practices, demonstrating how criminal enterprises have adopted corporate-style growth strategies. For companies and security teams operating in these areas, particularly in the extractive sector where remote locations and valuable assets create inherent vulnerabilities, this means that threat assessments can no longer rely solely on historical incident mapping.
The financial scale of these operations is significant. The revenue generated from ransoms by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – a separate group operating in Northern African countries - has been estimated at €60m between 2006 and 2012. With this level of financial incentive, and the demonstrated success of the business model, such activities are likely to continue and evolve further unless effectively countered.
For security professionals in the extractive sector, these developments demand a comprehensive reassessment of risk management approaches. Traditional journey management protocols based on fixed routes and predictable threat areas must be constantly reviewed. The combination of traditional vulnerabilities - remote locations, valuable assets, complex local dynamics - with evolved criminal enterprises operating at near-corporate levels of sophistication requires equally sophisticated security responses. This means developing more dynamic threat assessment models, strengthening local intelligence networks, and implementing adaptive security protocols that can respond to rapidly shifting threat landscapes.