The thirteenth edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI 2026), released in March by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), delivers a verdict that West African governments can no longer explain away as foreign misreading of local realities: the region’s terrorism crisis is, at its root, a governance crisis.

Globally, the picture looks encouraging on paper. Terrorism deaths fell by 28 percent in 2025 to 5,582, the lowest figure since 2007, while recorded incidents dropped by roughly 22 percent to 2,944.

Eighty-one countries improved their scores, the strongest annual improvement count since 2021. But that global decline masks a brutal concentration. Nearly 70 percent of terrorism-related deaths worldwide occurred in just five countries Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, and the Democratic Republic of Congo and six of the ten most-affected nations on earth sit in Sub-Saharan Africa, a designation the region has now held every year since 2022 .

A Continent Bleeding From State Fragility

The IEP is explicit that this is not primarily a story about ideology. Radicalization across the continent, the report argues, is a direct reflection of state fragility, institutional weakness, and deteriorating economic conditions, factors that armed groups exploit to recruit young people into a self-reinforcing cycle of violence.

This framing should unsettle every West African capital far more than it appears to have done.

Nigeria offers the starkest illustration. The country climbed from sixth to fourth place globally, recording 750 terrorism deaths in 2025, a 46 percent jump from the previous year, and 171 attacks, up from 120 in 2024. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram were responsible for roughly 80 percent of those deaths, while civilians bore the brunt, accounting for 67 percent of all fatalities against 19 percent for the military.

Yet, as this columnist has previously reported, Abuja’s response to uncomfortable rankings has historically been denial rather than reform; when Nigeria placed sixth in the 2024 GTI, the Defence Headquarters dismissed the IEP outright as an “outsider” unfit to judge the country’s counter-terrorism performance. The 2026 edition has, so far, been met with the same official silence.

Niger and Mali complete a grim regional picture. In Niger, JNIM and Islamic State Sahel Province operations spilling across the border from Mali and Burkina Faso have been compounded by the 2024 coup and the subsequent withdrawal of US and French troops, which measurably reduced counter-terrorism cooperation.

Mali, despite a reduction in attack numbers, remains what analysts describe as an epicentre of violent extremism, with rival factions of ISWAP-aligned Lakurawa and established groups increasingly targeting civilians, who make up 67 percent of fatalities there as well.

Borders as Security Loopholes
A recurring structural theme in the 2026 index is the exploitation of West Africa’s porous frontiers. The report found that 64 to 76 percent of attacks in the region occurred within 100 kilometres of an international border, prompting the IEP to describe these frontiers as “security loopholes”.

Boko Haram continues to operate across the Nigeria-Cameroon-Chad tri-border zone as though national boundaries do not exist, exploiting the difficult terrain of the Lake Chad Basin to evade security forces. This is not merely a security failure; it is a governance failure, reflecting decades of underinvestment in border administration, local policing, and cross-border intelligence-sharing among ECOWAS member states.

Governance, Not Ideology, Drives Recruitment

Perhaps the most consequential finding for policymakers concerns what actually pushes young West Africans into armed groups. The GTI 2026 reports that for 71 percent of recruits in Sub-Saharan Africa, the final catalyst for joining a terrorist organisation was human rights abuses committed by state security forces themselves. A further quarter of voluntary recruits cited a total lack of job opportunities as their primary motivation.

In regions with weak governance, the report notes, armed groups exploit this vacuum by offering tangible benefits, including salaries, to young people with no legitimate employment prospects.

This finding should reframe how West African governments approach counter-terrorism spending. Military hardware and troop deployments cannot substitute for accountable policing, functioning justice systems, and economic inclusion.

Where the state itself becomes a source of abuse rather than protection, it does not merely fail to prevent radicalization it actively manufactures the grievance that recruiters weaponize.

A Regional Reckoning Overdue
Not every signal was negative. Benin, once treated as a secondary front in the Sahel spillover, rose eight places to 19th on the index, a reminder that improvement is possible where governments invest seriously in both security and institutional legitimacy. But such gains remain the exception rather than the rule across the sub-region.

The GTI 2026 leaves West African governments with an uncomfortable but necessary conclusion: containing the escalation of terrorist activity will require confronting state fragility, weak regional coordination, and youth alienation, drivers that no amount of hardware or troop surges can resolve on their own.

Until governance itself accountable security forces, credible justice institutions, and genuine economic opportunity becomes the centrepiece of the counter-terrorism strategy, the region risks remaining what the index has now called it for four consecutive years: the world’s foremost hotbed of terrorism.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/Science communicator, Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,United States Institute of Peace (USIP), [email protected] +233555275880

References
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