Cocaine across the Sahel: the protection economy

The network sits above the road

The familiar image shows pickup trucks crossing an empty desert. Large cases start elsewhere. International wholesalers arrange supply. Aviation or maritime contacts receive it. Brokers find storage, transport and buyers. Officials can provide documents, warnings or a decision not to inspect.

A 2023 UN panel described terrorist groups, signatories to Mali's former peace agreement and transnational criminal networks competing over routes through Gao and Kidal. The panel called Mali a hub between Gulf of Guinea coastal states and North Africa in both directions. It reported that many major dealers lived in Bamako.

Investigators should follow the Bamako connection. Distance from state control can help a convoy. The deal can depend on people inside a capital, port authority, customs service or licensed company. A strategy aimed at remote drivers can spare the organisers who select the load, arrange payment and settle disputes.

European and South American groups supply and finance parts of the chain. European investigators broke up a Balkan network in 2024 that used logistics hubs in West Africa and the Canary Islands. Le Monde reported links among Brazil's First Capital Command, African intermediaries and European organisations, including the 'Ndrangheta. No single cartel owns the Sahel route.

Protection creates the political market

Traffickers need a series of permissions. A transport owner accepts a load. A broker chooses a warehouse. An official changes a document or shares an inspection schedule. An armed actor allows passage through territory it influences. Each participant can sell a service without buying the shipment.

International Crisis Group traced how drug profits fed political and military competition in northern Mali before and after the 2012 rebellion. Traffickers built relationships with state officials, community leaders and armed movements. Those relationships turned commercial disputes into political conflicts and gave armed entrepreneurs money to recruit and equip men.

UNODC reached a related finding in 2024. The agency identified political elites, community leaders and armed-group leaders as facilitators. Corrupt officials and money launderers connect the remote movement of a load to institutions that can protect ownership and profit.

Armed groups can tax a road, escort a convoy, protect a warehouse or punish a rival. Some ban a commodity or attack transporters. Researchers need evidence about the contract and payment before they label a group the owner of a trafficking network.

Investigators need a narrower narco-jihadist test

Jihadist figures and drug traffickers have shared personnel, territory and business relationships in the Sahel. Armed groups profit from routes under their influence. Investigators have grounds to examine specific commanders and transactions.

Public evidence does not show JNIM directing the regional cocaine market. UN reports describe competition among jihadists, former rebel groups, political figures and criminal organisations. They describe taxation and facilitation alongside direct trafficking. The mechanism changes by place and actor.

Governments gain from a simpler story. A narco-jihadist label directs attention toward insurgent territory and away from customs fraud, aviation access, police protection and money laundering. It can turn traders and pastoral communities into suspects while senior organisers retain political cover.

Seizures measure police contact with the market

UNODC reported that Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger seized 1,466 kilograms of cocaine in 2022. The same states had recorded an annual average of 13 kilograms between 2013 and 2020. The increase gives strong evidence that cocaine had gained a larger presence in the Sahel.

Researchers cannot turn the ratio into a flow estimate. Police may seize more because traffickers move more. They may have better intelligence, equipment or incentives to report. Researchers should test any estimate against evidence about enforcement and corruption.

Agencies can distort a seizure when they use destination retail prices for a load intercepted far from that market. The resulting figure can exaggerate the money available to a local transporter. Analysts should report weight, purity, location, stage of movement and valuation method.

Court outcomes matter as much as seizure photos. Authorities should publish whether prosecutors charged the owner, transporter and protecting official; whether judges admitted the evidence; and whether the state recovered assets. A burned pile of cocaine cannot answer those questions.

Transporters seed local drug markets

Lower-level transporters may receive cocaine instead of cash. They sell part of that payment near the route. Lucia Bird of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime linked payment in kind to reports of growing crack use in Agadez.

The Guardian documented women in Agadez who used crack while trapped in debt and sex work. Service providers described a cycle in which transport debt, exploitation and drug dependence reinforced one another. Europe receives part of the shipment. Sahelian communities absorb part of the health cost.

Retail sellers add cocaine to an existing market. Cannabis resin remains the most seized drug in the Sahel. Nigerien forces have intercepted tramadol with cannabis, while UNODC has warned that African markets contain cocaine, pharmaceutical opioids and synthetic mixtures alongside cannabis.

Governments that treat every drug budget as an enforcement budget leave that market untreated. Hospitals need toxicology, overdose care and referral systems. Community services need confidential treatment that does not expose a patient to arrest.

Investigate the protection network

Coastal and Sahelian investigators should build joint cases around shipments, companies, phones, payments and assets. The case team needs customs, financial intelligence, prosecutors and anti-corruption staff. Military patrols can support an interception. They cannot audit a logistics company or trace a payment.

Governments should publish common seizure fields: date, broad location, substance, tested weight and purity, transport mode, agency, arrests, charges and final court result. Regional analysts could then distinguish a route change from a change in reporting.

Investigators should follow protection upward. Asset declarations, unexplained wealth inquiries, procurement records and company ownership can expose officials and business figures who never touch a packet. Witness-protection rules matter when a customs officer names a superior or a driver names an armed commander.

States should protect lawful mobility. Traders, herders and transport workers use the same broad corridors as traffickers. Collective restrictions raise prices, invite extortion and give armed groups another service to sell. Intelligence-led cases place the burden on investigators instead of border communities.

Traffickers, officials and armed groups keep the trade moving through separate protection deals. Investigators can arrest a transporter and seize a load. The organisers retain their network until a court dismantles those deals and recovers the profit.