How organised crime is expanding rapidly in Africa

ORGANISED crime continues to surge and deepen across the African continent while state resilience to these threats is weakening.

- MANYANE MANYANE

This is according to the 2025 Africa Organised Crime Index, which stated that many countries on the continent tend to favour institutional responses, such as using non-state actors, when it comes to building resilience.

The non-state actors play a vital role in growing resilience by supporting vulnerable communities and holding authorities to account.

They are often at the forefront of leading social protection efforts. However, since the 2021 index, the 'non-state actors' resilience indicator has declined the most.

The index, published by the EU-funded Enact programme run by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Interpol and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, found that the most pervasive criminal markets were financial crimes, human trafficking, nonrenewable resource crimes, and the trade in counterfeit goods and arms trafficking.

Since 2023, the two fastest-growing markets have been financial crimes and the trade in counterfeit goods, reflecting global patterns. Although human smuggling has grown more slowly since 2023, over the six years between the 2019 and 2025 indexes, it was the second fastest-growing criminal market (the first being cocaine), which is indicative of instability and conflicts driving the movement of people.

Other criminal markets recorded marginal decreases between 2023 and 2025. These include arms trafficking, flora crimes and cyber crimes.