Organized crime formed in the wake of Africa’s postcolonial independence in the 1970s, proliferated through continental conflicts in the 1980s and ’90s, and exploded amid globalization and economic growth in the 2000s, according to a new report.
Africa Organised Crime Index 2025 notes how criminal markets, actors and resilience have changed over time. The Enhancing Africa’s Response to Transnational Organized Crime (ENACT) project published the November 17, 2025, report.
“Organised crime has expanded rapidly in Africa’s post-colonial states, in response to weak governance and socio-economic inequalities, and fuelled by abundant natural resources and rich biodiversity, as well as porous borders, political instability, persevering conflicts, fragility and systemic corruption,” the report states.
The report defines organized crime as groups or networks acting together through violence, corruption or related activities to obtain direct or indirect financial or material benefits within a country or transnationally.
A recent international police operation coordinated by Interpol and Afripol and led by Ghanaian, Ivoirian and Nigerian law enforcement agencies underscores the prevalence of African organized crime networks. Operation Djembe dismantled West African groups involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, extortion, money laundering and cybercrime, according to Interpol. Authorities arrested 204 people, 71 of whom are suspected crime group members.
The sweep, announced days before the ENACT report’s release, rescued 202 human trafficking victims, identified 22 smuggled migrants, seized 58 kilograms of drugs and impounded 71 vehicles.
The investigation is a microcosm of the types of organized crime perpetrated across Africa.
According to the ENACT report, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa offer insight into how organized crime took root. In Kenya, militias and gangs formed after universal suffrage in the 1960s and became tools of those seeking to influence elections. By the 1980s and ’90s, youth militias had embedded themselves in political parties and perpetrated election violence.
The largest and most notorious of these groups is the Mungiki, which has an estimated 100,000 members. Such groups are involved in a range of crimes such as cattle rustling and extortion and have gained influence by collaborating with state actors during elections, the report states.
Organized crime in Nigeria evolved from the postindependence oil sector and was enabled by corrupt state officials whose complicity helped criminals expand and eventually take up armed robbery, drug trafficking and piracy.
In South Africa, post-World War II industrial development created fertile ground for urban crime to grow in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria. Street gangs emerged and evolved into current groups.
“Organised criminal gangs, which the Index categorises as mafia-style groups, wield severe influence in South Africa’s organised crime landscape today and have a negative impact on social and state structures,” the report states.
In the 1970s, organized crime grew in concert with a rise in oil prices, high inflation and increased debt among developing nations, the report states. By the 1980s, conflicts increased, and foreign actors entered Africa’s illegal markets, resulting in increased arms trafficking.
At the same time, “fortune hunters” from Europe and Asia set up import-export businesses to cover up crimes such as mineral, diamond and ivory trafficking. As the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, some authoritarian nations became democracies, and others gained full sovereignty. Civil wars were ongoing, and borders and societies were opening, the report states. “These critical shifts not only allowed for the free movement of people and legitimate goods, but also the trafficking of illicit goods.”
The international community took note. The African Union’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, in the early 1990s discussed strengthening coordination and cooperation to address crime and terrorism. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) was adopted in 2000. All but one African nation — the Republic of the Congo — either has ratified or acceded to the UNTOC. The Congo has signed the agreement.
African criminal markets had grown by 2000 as globalization emerged. European authorities attacked cocaine trafficking routes from South America, so some shifted to West African nations such as Cabo Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal. From there, drugs made their way into Europe. East Africa became a significant transit route for Afghanistan’s heroin. Continental conflicts bolstered arms traffickers.
By 2019, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down borders, but criminals adapted and increasingly exploited cyberspace. At the same time, restrictions pushed many disenfranchised and at-risk populations to informal and criminal economies. This fueled a growing gap between crime and nations’ resilience to it, the report states.