Introduction
Africa and its islands are surrounded by the Indian, Atlantic, and Southern Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea in the north. None of these oceans have been spared from trafficking in drugs and wildlife, illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, migrant smuggling, and piracy (Bruwer, 2019; Okafor-Yarwood, 2019). These crimes also impact landlocked African states that depend on their coastal neighbours, particularly for trade (Mlepo, 2022; Wambua, 2009). On the eastern and western sides of the continent, piracy and armed robbery have received particular attention as the primary threat to global shipping for two decades.1
Piracy studies have traditionally focused on maritime dynamics. While notable exceptions exist (see, for example, Abdulahi & Salim 2024 and Mahmood 2024), this pattern also applies to explanations of piracy’s resurgence off the coast of Somalia, where several analyses have unpacked maritime dynamics, particularly the withdrawal or shift in focus of naval forces, as contributing factors (Bueger, 2024; Chibelushi, 2024). At the same time, piracy studies have long debated the relationship between the land and sea dimensions of maritime crime. Several scholars have emphasized that the ‘sea’ dimensions of piracy cannot be understood in isolation from its ‘land’ dimensions (see, for example, Bruwer 2020, Dua 2019, Jacobsen 2019, Mannov 2013). Building on these debates, this article argues that careful attention should be paid to land dimensions in debates about contemporary piracy. The importance of this has become increasingly evident in recent years. 2023–2024 saw several attacks off the coast of Somalia, including the highest ransom payment since piracy’s peak in 2012 (Jacobsen, 2024), while incidents in the Gulf of Guinea continued to pose risks to seafarers (Jacobsen & Sernia, 2021).
These developments call for renewed consideration of the conditions that allow piracy to persist despite ongoing counter-piracy efforts, highlighting the risk of piracy reemerging in both regions – particularly when maritime countermeasures are diverted or overstretched. This raises questions about both the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of law enforcement strategies and countermeasures primarily focused at sea.
The global impact of emerging threats, like the ongoing attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, further illuminates the currently limited ability of global governance measures to counteract threats that spill into the sea as a product of onshore phenomena. This is also illustrated where, in spite of countermeasures, criminals merely draw on their creativity and shift their operations elsewhere or simply diversify into other types of crime (Jacobsen & Høy-Carrasco, 2018; Jacobsen & Rasmussen, 2024).
The article is structured as follows. The following section examines Somali piracy in the Western Indian Ocean, highlighting that persistent deficiencies in onshore governance remain central to the risk of a resurgence in piracy. The section following that turns to Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the primary source of most pirate attacks in the region, and explores the threat posed by the existence of broader criminal networks with links to piracy. The following section addresses potential policy responses, highlighting how insights from the preceding analysis underscore the need to tackle both onshore governance challenges and wider criminal linkages. Finally, the conclusion reflects on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Somali Piracy in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO)
This article examines shortcomings in the onshore governance of Somali waters, arguing that these persistent failings are central to the persistent risk of piracy’s reemergence. As long as these governance shortcomings remain unresolved, the conditions that perpetuate piracy will endure. This section focuses specifically on the onshore drivers, highlighting how land-based governance challenges contribute to the broader environment in which piracy can resurface.
The Threat
Somalia is rated the most fragile state in the world (Fund for Peace, 2024). This helps us understand the role played by a combination of limited infrastructure, insecurity, unemployment, and a weak economy in the existence and functioning of both legal and illegal enterprises. Numerous failed state-building attempts, some sponsored by the international community, have caused Somalia to face a range of challenges, including protracted conflict, famine and violent extremism. Its maritime domain has not been spared as Somalia is also plagued, inter alia, by illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing by foreign fleets, weapons smuggling, and piracy (Gentili, 2024). While the international community has dealt with these as individual challenges, all stem from the same drivers.2
Although the international community recognizes the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) as Somalia’s official government, governance of Somali territory is fragmented and does not easily lend itself to traditional governance formats. Instead, Somali society is primarily organized along patrilineal clan lines. These decentralized non-traditional forms of governance have filled the vacuum of central governance left since the fall of Siad Barre’s Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP) in 1991. This has resulted in limited development and service delivery across most of the country, with the autonomous Somaliland and semi-autonomous Puntland considered the most stable regions. It is from Puntland, which spans the tip of the Horn of Africa and borders both the Gulf of Aden and the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), that pirates began to seek booty in the early 2000s (Bruwer, 2021).
The emergence of piracy in semi-autonomous Puntland, where governance was weak but not altogether failed, reflects Shortland and Varese’s argument that piracy requires a certain level of stability to operate rather than an outright failed state. That relative stability was found in Puntland (Shortland & Varese, 2014). From here, the location near busy shipping lanes allowed vessels to be targeted as they passed en route to global markets.
Although Somalia has the longest coastline on mainland Africa and waters rich in marine species, weak governance has resulted in limited infrastructure for the extraction and processing of catches. Combined with political disagreements over resource sharing and licensing matters (Hansen, 2011; Schindler, 2014), Somalia has struggled to optimally utilize its valuable fisheries resources, denying Somalis the opportunity to fully profit from their lucrative fishing grounds. Conversely, weak governance institutions have also failed to protect these resources from unlawful exploitation. This combination of high-value marine living resources and limited onshore and maritime governance has caused Somalia’s fish to be illegally targeted by foreign fishing fleets (Bruwer, 2021; Glaser, Roberts & Hurlburt, 2019).3
These same shortcomings enabled some individuals to take up arms in an attempt to drive out illegal fishing vessels and to extract money or “fines” from them in lieu of legitimate fishing licenses (Percy & Shortland, 2013). While piracy, by definition, happens at sea, it stems from land-based drivers, including governance failures, which also encourage other maritime crimes, like IUU fishing (Percy & Shortland, 2013). Yet both are addressed primarily offshore (Bruwer, 2021; Jacobsen & Larsen, 2023).
While this narrative of “aggrieved fishermen” is often credited as explaining the emergence of initial pirate attacks, it cannot justify the eventual targeting of a variety of merchant and fishing vessels in international waters far from the Somali coast (Percy and Shortland, 2013).4 This can only be explained by the lucrative nature of the business model (Percy & Shortland, 2013; Zwolski & Kaunert, 2014), which relies on a risk versus reward calculation, and enabling conditions both on land and at sea.
Attacks took the form of hijacking and kidnapping vessels and crew in exchange for a ransom from vessel owners. This modus operandi can be explained by the ease with which vessels could be held in certain coastal areas of Somalia in anticipation of a ransom payment, and the impunity with which pirates were allowed to operate (Percy & Shortland, 2013; Zwolski & Kaunert, 2014). A large contingent of each pirate network is based onshore to facilitate operations prior to an attack and the holding of vessels and crews in expectation of a ransom.
Piracy, therefore, not merely emerges in permissive onshore contexts; it is anchored onshore, including in coastal communities through phenomena such as “spheres of obligations that create possibilities of profit for themselves as well as their larger communities” (Dua, 2019, p. 63). These social obligations, for example, arising through clan structures, enable pirates to both take to the seas and to return to land, enjoying support from certain sectors of the community. Majid and Abdiraham (2018) remind us that informal networks are crucial, especially where formal state structures and services are absent or dysfunctional.5
The millions of dollars in ransom payments paid to Somali pirates – between $339 million and $413 million by 2013 – have proved a serious incentive. Such sums allowed kingpins to invest in future operations and in personal assets, such as property in neighbouring countries like Kenya. As the business model proved conspicuously profitable, participation in piracy and attacks increased, peaking between 2009 and 2011, with more than 100 incidents occurring in the first quarter of 2011 alone. By 2012, successful attacks declined significantly, largely attributed to the unprecedented response by the international community, which began to bear fruit (Bruwer, 2021).
Considering the importance of piracy’s onshore drivers and connection to IUU fishing, we shall now take a closer look at the response, which had a limited focus on both of these drivers.
The Response
The response to Somali piracy is often called unprecedented, given that there hasn’t been the same level of peacetime cooperation at sea before and since, especially between international organizations, WIO countries in the Global South, an array of actors from the Global North, private actors like the shipping industry, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The response must, however, be understood from the perspective of the interests that it intended to protect. While some responses stemmed from humanitarian motives, such as protecting World Food Programme vessels delivering aid to Somalia and assisting victims of piracy, the response primarily aimed to protect global trade and vessels transiting through the WIO. Between 80% and 90% of traded goods are moved by sea, and when a vessel is hijacked, it is removed from circulation and cannot generate income. Often, in addition to paying ransom, cargo is lost, and insurance costs rise.
Because there were limited functional government entities with which to cooperate, the response was arguably implemented in spite of Somalia, rather than on its behalf (Bruwer, 2021). Responses were primarily driven by United Nations agencies and states external to the region rather than the most affected African states, including Somalia.
The key actors6 participating in responses were states with capable blue water navies and criminal justice systems, states that perceived the spillover of insecurity from Somalia as an existential threat, and states whose shipping, and therefore economies, were threatened. This meant that a country like Denmark, home to one of the largest container shipping fleets in the world, played an important role in the response. The shipping industry also implemented many measures to protect its vessels from attacks.
The international response to Somali piracy was enabled by the universal jurisdiction afforded to piracy under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Piracy is defined as a crime committed on the high seas (UNCLOS, art. 101, United Nations, 1982), and any state that has criminalized piracy may seize pirate vessels and prosecute offenders (UNCLOS, art. 105, United Nations, 1982). This renders piracy legally distinctive when compared with other maritime crimes prevalent in the Western Indian Ocean, such as illegal fishing and drug trafficking, for which flag-state jurisdiction generally takes precedence over foreign intervention on the high seas.
The scope of universal jurisdiction afforded to piracy was further expanded through a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which authorized international naval forces to suppress pirate activity not only on the high seas but, with the consent of the Somali government, within Somalia’s territorial waters (United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1816, 1846, 1851, United Nations Security Council, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c).
The response was multifaceted and included a combination of efforts, often implemented in partnerships. Responses were guided by the informal mechanism of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) that brought together state and non-state actors in working groups to deliberate, design, coordinate and implement responses. While some working groups had a focus on land, most of the CGPCS’s efforts were aimed at the at-sea response. Key maritime responses comprised a combination of naval operations, including coalitions like the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) and the European Union Naval Forces (EUNAVFOR), self-protection measures by the shipping industry and establishing engagement forums that cut across institutions and industry such as the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) forum.
Whilst navies addressed piracy from offshore, there have also been development efforts on land, as there usually are when a security threat stems from an insecure and underdeveloped region. Considering the root causes of piracy, efforts to improve the conditions on land are most likely to reduce the number of people needing to engage in illegal activity. But this was also where the least amount of effort and resources have been spent.
The most prominent land-based efforts related to criminal justice capacity building were focussed in Somalia and East Africa. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) established a Counter Piracy Programme (CPP), which has since developed into the Global Maritime Crime Programme (GMCP). The GMCP has led the way in criminal justice capacity-building efforts, including fostering agreements whereby international navies patrolling the WIO agreed to hand arrested suspects to regional countries like Kenya, the Seychelles, and Mauritius for prosecution and imprisonment. This was preceded by law reforms in these countries and the expansion of their prison systems to hold piracy suspects and convicted pirates. While this certainly had a deterrent effect, prosecution and imprisonment overwhelmingly target foot-soldiers rather than kingpins and the impact of this “legal finish” is therefore limited.
Agreements between these prosecuting states and Somalia also allow convicted pirates to be transferred back to Somalia for imprisonment (Bruwer, 2024).7 In a groundbreaking judgment, Somalia convicted its first group of pirates responsible for the attack on the MV Central Park in November 2023 (Wintour, 2023). Work to improve regional maritime law enforcement and prosecutorial capacity to combat maritime crime is ongoing on a multilateral and bilateral basis. Most recently, the FGS entered into an agreement with Türkiye in 2024 to help bolster its maritime security through multiple capacity-building and infrastructure efforts. In return, Türkiye receives a share of the income from resources extracted in Somalia’s waters (Abdi & Wario, 2025).
The principal regionally driven and regionally focused effort has been the establishment of the Djibouti Code of Conduct Concerning the Repression of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden (DCOC). All DCOC member states border the WIO and agreed to the Code at a meeting initiated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2009. The Code aims to foster cooperation in combatting threats to maritime security in the WIO region (Djibouti Code of Conduct n.d.).
With the decline of piracy, much of the interaction and certain mechanisms developed in response to piracy stagnated as key international states no longer felt it necessary to contribute to them. This caused regional African states to assume ownership of mechanisms such as the CGPCS, which has since developed into the Contact Group on Illicit Maritime Activities (CGIMA) in 2022, currently chaired by the Seychelles. The group has not met regularly, and the future role it may carve out for itself in the WIO maritime security landscape is unclear. The DCOC also expanded its focus through the Jeddah Amendment, which expanded the Code’s scope in recognition of the region’s challenges with all forms of maritime crime. The DCOC has also led to the establishment of the Regional Coordination Operations Centre and the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC).
These regionally-owned onshore governance mechanisms have struggled to equal the global effort at the height of piracy. This is especially true at sea, since no regional navies or coast guards can compete with bigger navies from the likes of the United States, India, and certain European nations, who have most clearly dictated the sea-based response and whose strategic interests require them to maintain a presence in the region. This has also been a challenge with regard to responding to other maritime crimes in the WIO, such as intercepting drug trafficking vessels on the high seas. The Seychelles Coast Guard has had the most success in intercepting such illicit drug shipments, likely because it can operate far from shore and has participated in naval coalitions (Bruwer, 2021).
African states (Egypt, for example, home to the Suez Canal, and a DCOC member) are yet to contribute to the response to attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. The same is true for certain near-African nations such as Yemen, from where the Houthis operate, which again serves to explain why external states such as the United States and the United Kingdom have taken the lead in responding to Houthi attacks on vessels. Like piracy, these attacks both threaten their economies and pose a larger threat to global peace and security.
The re-emergence of Somali piracy in 2023
Following the decline in Somali-based piracy from 2012 onwards, academic attention shifted to engaging with maritime security more broadly (see, for example, Bruwer, 2021; Bueger & Edmunds, 2020; Jacobsen & Larsen, 2023; Panneerselvam, 2021). However, given that Somali pirate groups have again found success since late 2023, we see a shift back to analyses that zoom in specifically on Somali piracy (Mahmood, 2024; Walker, 2024). The difference now is that stakeholders have the insight, gained in the intermediary period, that piracy is inextricably linked to developments ashore.
While there have been sporadic attempts to hijack vessels since 2012, these were largely unsuccessful until late 2023, when isolated attacks again resulted in a number of successful hijackings (Jacobsen, 2024). The EU reported 43 incidents of piracy and attempted piracy between November 2023 and October 2024 (Martin, 2024). And in one case, this resulted in the payment of approximately $5 million in ransom for the release of MV Abdullah in April 2024 (Hassani, 2024). Pirates also demanded $10 million in ransom for a Chinese-flagged fishing vessel. While the vessel was released, it is uncertain if the ransom was paid (Ellis, 2025).
This resurgence in attacks can be attributed to a number of developments, both on land and at sea. Although it is often argued that the international community’s attention has been diverted to Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, other causes are also likely to have contributed. These include the removal of the piracy high-risk area, the relaxation of shipping self-protection measures, and the lapsing of UN Security Council Resolution 2608, which had enabled international naval forces to pursue suspected piracy activity in Somalia’s territorial waters and monitor developments in critical coastal areas (Jacobsen, 2024).
The need to address onshore dimensions
As the Houthi attacks on vessels are rooted in the land-based onslaught of Israel on Palestine, so too the drivers of the current piracy resurgence arise from land-based circumstances. Significant onshore security challenges in Somalia remain, including from al-Shabaab, and increasingly also Islamic State Somalia, shifting priorities towards the Red Sea in both Somalia and the wider region. With a few positive exceptions that must be acknowledged, the structural conditions in Somalia which drove the initial emergence of piracy largely persist. So too does ongoing IUU fishing linked to licensing schemes and disagreements onshore that rob Somalis of vital economic activity.
Significant onshore security challenges
Piracy is not the only challenge that security forces in Somalia are tasked to respond to, and accordingly, its prioritization, amongst other pressing domestic and external security threats, cannot be taken for granted. Somalia has experienced other growing threats that have been a priority for various Somali security forces, and external donors, to combat. Amongst these is a twofold counterterror challenge, insofar as the growing presence of IS Somalia in the Puntland region adds to the longstanding presence of, and efforts to fight, al-Shabaab. It is worth noting here that Puntland is the primary region which has historically, and is still today, affected by pirate group activity. When onshore security tasks demand attention – with counter-terror efforts being only one example – it must be understood that with the same amount of security forces available, there is a risk that other tasks may be afforded less attention and resources. This is one example of how onshore security dynamics and changing threat landscapes affect counter-piracy efforts.
Structural conditions in Somalia
The onshore structural conditions giving rise to piracy, discussed above, were given scant attention and resources at the height of the counter-piracy response. Scholars have, for example, been critical of the mammoth response to piracy, while the dire situation in Somalia has been allowed to persist for over three decades (Beloff, 2013; Beri, 2011; Gilpin, 2009). Part of the critique is the international community’s insistence on working with the FGS. Kraska, for example, argues that the world only turns its attention to Somalia when its domestic problems have transnational impacts. He noted that “the West does not need a piracy policy, it needs a Somali policy … that recognizes the regional and tribal authorities that do the real work of bringing greater stability to a nation awash in hardship” (Kraska, 2010). Menkhaus similarly notes that while “external actors have a long record of injecting arms and funds into Somalia”, they “rarely get the outcome they seek on their investment”, even if “they do have a good degree of success in blocking unwanted outcomes in Somalia” (Menkhaus, 2009).
While some counter-piracy resources were also directed to improving socio-economic conditions on land, these primarily came from development programs through projects that have run for decades. Further, given that they have been unsuccessful in improving the predicament of most Somalis, it is unsurprising that limited development and income-generating opportunities provided a recruitment base and motivation for participation in piracy (Bruwer, 2021).8
Ongoing IUU fishing linked to licensing schemes and disagreements onshore
The complex relationship between land and sea is particularly important to a full understanding of the entanglements of piracy and IUU fishing (Abdimalik, Ayub & Sulamain, 2019; Gilmer, 2016; Glaser, Roberts & Hurlburt, 2019). The awarding of licences permitting foreign vessels to fish in Somalia’s territorial waters is a highly lucrative and not always entirely transparent activity. These licences are complex in that there are disagreements between the Federal Government of Somalia, the semi-autonomous Puntland and the fully autonomous Somaliland as to who can issue which licences (Abdi & Wario, 2025; World Bank Group, 2019). Capacity to monitor licensed vessels and to respond to infractions is, meanwhile, limited, which means that Somalis may still be crowded out and have their livelihoods threatened by foreign fishing vessels, whether they are licensed or not (Omolo & Okumu, 2025). There have been violent encounters between Somali fishermen and foreign fishing vessels when local fishermen question the legitimacy of foreign fishing vessel licences. Whilst the violence and resentment are directed towards these foreign fishing vessels, a degree of resentment and frustration is also directed towards the elites in Somalia who profit from issuing fishing licenses.
This is, therefore, an example of how maritime crime links in complex ways to onshore dynamics, at local as well as at political levels. Given this context, it is not surprising that successful attacks have again occurred, since the drivers of piracy have not been meaningfully mitigated. So too in the Gulf of Guinea, the threat of reemergence still looms.
Piracy, Armed Robbery and Maritime Crimes in the Gulf of Guinea
The Threat
The Gulf of Guinea (GoG) region has a legacy of piracy, which has taken different forms at different times in history (Jacobsen & Sernia, 2021). These have included insurgency-related piracy, petro-piracy (i.e., the stealing of oil cargo), and, more recently, kidnap for ransom (KFR)9—similar to but also different from piracy off the coast of Somalia and into the WIO.
KFR in the Gulf of Guinea is largely a post-2016 phenomenon (Jacobsen & Sernia, 2021). Prior to this shift, pirates followed a different business model, targeting only vessels carrying oil, which they would siphon empty and then abandon. This involved complex planning, including the ship-to-ship transfer of stolen oil and the coordination of its delivery to a buyer (Brock, 2013). With growing attention operations of such complexity became vulnerable to interference, and this type of ‘petro piracy’ almost disappeared around 2016, “due to the cumulative effects of hijacking failures (like NORTE, ADOUR or MAXIMUS), the global crash of oil prices ($120/barrel in 2013 to $30/barrel in 2016), and the investigation by Nigerian authorities of some kingpins” (Jacobsen & Sernia 2021).10
However, despite these important offshore changes – i.e. the drop in petro piracy (Kamal-Deen, 2015; Onuoha, 2012) in the Gulf of Guinea – the pirates involved in these criminal activities continued to be active, and the onshore dimensions remained largely unaddressed. In terms of onshore locations, for example, pirate groups were still based in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, a region that continued to face marginalization and where unaddressed poverty, employment and infrastructure challenges served to support the recruitment of unemployed young people into crimes such as piracy. Indeed, as became evident when Niger Delta-based piracy ‘reemerged’ in a new KFR-form, pirate groups were still based in the Niger Delta region. This is where they gather before an attack, and where pirate groups bring their hostages in anticipation of ransom payments. Importantly, this new KFR modus operandi, with incidents increasing from around 2017, with an increase from 60 recorded incidents in 2017 to 99 in 2018 (Jacobsen & Sernia, 2021, p. 28) and reaching a peak in 2019, meant that not only vessels carrying oil but a far broader range of vessels were targeted by pirate groups whose interests had shifted from cargo to kidnapping crew.
By this point, Niger Delta-based pirate groups had turned to a modus where they would quickly board vessels, take hostages before they made it to safety in the ship’s citadel, and then force them to climb down a ladder into one or two smaller speedboats (pirate skiffs). From there, the pirates would sail their hostages into the Niger Delta region, where hostages would be held in camps during a negotiation period, ending only once a ransom amount was agreed and paid. In the Niger Delta, hostages are typically held for shorter periods of time (6–8 weeks). “Deep offshore” pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are “capable of operating far from the coast of West Africa and target international shipping traffic” (Jacobsen & Sernia, 2021). In 2019, when piracy in the Gulf of Guinea was at its height, 146 crew members, primarily international crew, were taken hostage by Niger Delta-based pirate groups. At that time, it was estimated that somewhere between four and six pirate groups were active in the GoG.
Crucially, piracy is interlinked with other types of crime in the Niger Delta, as it is in other regions where it occurs. As documented elsewhere, piracy is never the only illegal activity in which pirates engage.11 Not only because piracy is a seasonally-conditioned criminal business, which is possible only when weather conditions permit (Nørby, Jacobsen & Yücel, 2024). But also, as pirates themselves relate, because the skills that pirates possess and the networks in which they operate are linked to crimes beyond the highly lucrative oil crime business in the Niger Delta where the pirate’s skills – navigation and weapons handling, for example – are valued (Kamal-Deen, Jacobsen & Rasmussen, forthcoming; Jacobsen & Rasmussen, 2024; Madueke, Adamu & Jacobsen 2023). This is applicable beyond the Niger Delta itself, to the activities of criminal organizations in other states in the Gulf of Guinea and to international actors from outside the region.
We argue that, as for other types of maritime crime, piracy too must be understood not in isolation but from an analytical starting point that explicitly seeks to understand how a crime links to other criminal actors and forms part of a wider criminal network. This does not imply that all maritime crimes are inherently interconnected, nor that such connections are limited to explicitly criminal enterprises. In some cases, pirates’ activities outside periods of active piracy extend beyond strictly illicit engagements. Accordingly, it is essential to understand how individual crimes are embedded within a broader criminal economy. Adopting this analytical perspective allows for a more nuanced understanding of how pirates sustain themselves through related activities during periods when piracy is not viable. This point is particularly important, as it may be through these same channels that pirate activity subsequently re-emerges (Jacobsen & Rasmussen, 2024).
Following years of intense piracy threats in the Gulf of Guinea, we suddenly saw a sharp decline in the number of attacks recorded in this region (Maritime Information Cooperation & Awareness Center, 2023). This trend could be observed since mid-2021; in 2022, piracy in the GoG had dropped to historically low levels (Jacobsen, Morizur & Ebiede, 2023), with only a single piracy attack in December 2022 resulting in the kidnapping of crew members.
Yet, while piracy has been at low levels since, many still worry that it may return. Before we address that concern, however, we will first explore the responses to GoG-piracy that contributed to its decline.
The Response
In our analysis, no single factor can explain the reduced levels of piracy in the GoG. While several onshore developments have indeed been important in the sequence and synchronicity leading to this dramatic drop in piracy (Jacobsen & Rasmussen, 2024), this section below will focus on some of the principal efforts specifically designed to counter GoG piracy, through navy and related security-agency efforts, legal reform, improvements in coordination and information-sharing, etc.
Individual coastal countries in West Africa have significantly expanded and increased their maritime security assets, particularly for their navies. Several coastal states – like Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Ghana – have received new offshore patrol vessels. Some coastal states also received other new military vessels. In the case of Nigeria, this included landing vessels, hydrographic vessels and several gunboats “to enhance coastal monitoring and for operations in the Niger Delta creeks” (Jacobsen, Morizur & Ebiede, 2023; Olafusi, 2021). Without going into too much detail regarding naval capabilities, we see a trend of coastal states having augmented their navy capabilities in ways relevant to deterring piracy, among other maritime security challenges.
Regionally, the Yaoundé Architecture celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2023, at a somewhat challenging time, in part because of certain countries leaving ECOWAS following events in the Sahel. Nonetheless, the Yaounde Architecture remains the central backbone through which the region strives to enhance maritime security. The development of the Yaoundé structure had unfolded in tandem with other related counterpiracy and broader maritime security-enhancing efforts. One example from the period where Niger Delta-based pirates were still very active, and hence from a period where such collaboration could have a deterrent effect on these, was a May 2020 agreement whereby Bénin Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Togo agreed to collaborate. This resulted in a successful collaboration that tracked the fishing vessel Hailufeng 11 and enabled authorities to intercept the vessel as it sailed to Nigeria.
In addition to national and regional counterpiracy efforts, there were also several efforts involving external actors. These ranged from exercises, including the French-led Grand African Nemo and the US-led Obangame Express, to EU initiatives – notably the Coordinated Maritime Presence concept – and also individual navy responses by external actors. Together, these three levels of offshore efforts had a deterrent effect. So too did others, including various onshore efforts such as legal reforms.
In 2021, when KFR piracy in the Gulf of Guinea began to drop towards historically low levels, only five Gulf of Guinea states had UNCLOS-compliant counterpiracy laws in place (Jacobsen, Morizur & Ebiede, 2023; see illustration below). This was one of the “lines of effort” in a manifold counterpiracy approach then in operation. At a meeting in the G7++ Group of Friends of the Gulf of Guinea (G7++ FoGG), held in Abidjan in December 2022, it was noted that “while the rain has stopped, it’s time to mend your roof.” And one of the “holes” that counterpiracy actors agreed to “mend” was this legal dimension; thus, efforts continued with the aim of fully developing a legal framework that would make it possible to prosecute piracy suspects in all coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea region.
Several other onshore factors remain largely unaddressed, however. And it must also be stressed that the historically low level of piracy attacks in the Gulf of Guinea does not mean that maritime crime more broadly has reached similarly low levels. Rather, other threats to maritime security – illegal fishing and drug smuggling in West African waters, for example – remained pertinent.
The risk of resurgence and the importance of onshore dimensions
Despite the Gulf of Guinea counter-piracy architecture having been in place since 2013 (Jacobsen & Nordby, 2015), many onshore dimensions remain unaddressed, including marginalization, poverty, unemployment, and legal impunity. As with Somali piracy, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea must therefore be understood in relation to its underlying land-based drivers. When demonstrated across two forms of piracy that differ in many respects, this comparison, we argue, highlights the broader relevance and importance of this analytical insight.
Significant onshore security challenges
In the Gulf of Guinea, piracy is not necessarily the main security concern of all coastal states. Their waters are affected by crimes that more directly impact local populations, including crimes such as IUU (Okafor-Yarwood, 2020), which directly impacts food security, or the environmentally damaging crime of illegal oil bunkering (Okafor-Yarwood, 2018a, 2018b, 2020). For others still, it may be issues affecting regional or local stability, such as weapons or drugs smuggling (Falode, 2021; Lopez-Lucia, 2015). Focusing on the Gulf of Guinea, the prevalence of multiple security challenges explains how counterpiracy is prioritized. Beyond any parallels with the Somali case, this highlights a broader analytical point: counter-piracy efforts are shaped both by competing onshore security concerns and the constraints imposed by limited resources, and the need to address a wide range of security tasks. Taken together, these factors significantly affect states’ capacity to address piracy specifically.
As in Somalia, this is increasingly becoming a question of choosing whether to prioritize maritime or onshore security challenges. Coastal states are beginning to experience the consequences of growing instability in the Sahel, specifically the necessity of security forces to prioritize tasks in border regions. Ghana, for example, is increasingly affected by risks of insecurity at its land border with Burkina Faso, driven by growing instability there and in neighbouring Sahel countries (Kaledzi, 2025). If finite resources must be divided to counter an increasing number of threats, the allocation given to maritime governance may potentially decrease.
Lessons learned from counterpiracy in the GoG and the WIO
The cases of Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea both point to the need to address two specific land-based dynamics critical to the perpetuation of piracy: governance failures and criminal interlinkages. Piracy, like the Red Sea attacks, illustrates how a handful of individuals with relatively simple means can disrupt global shipping and maritime security. It also shows how failure to address land-based insecurity in coastal states has consequences at sea (Vreÿ, 2014). Considering the ease with which Red Sea attacks are being executed and the renewed isolated pirate attacks, it is reasonable to conclude that the counter-piracy response brought lasting security neither in the WIO nor to the countries from where maritime threats originate. This is because security measures alone have little impact on the causes of crime. Efforts to reproduce counter-piracy efforts to other regions or to other forms of maritime criminality in lieu of improved conditions in regional countries are therefore likely to fail. By understanding the limitations of counter-piracy we can learn valuable lessons for the improvement of responses to other maritime crimes. The following section will address the theoretical and practical implications of these insights.
First, by revisiting the land-sea piracy debate, this article identifies persistent blind spots that continue to undermine effective counter-piracy efforts. Although the blind spots examined – land-based governance failures in Somalia and criminal interlinkages in the Niger Delta – manifest differently, they both point to the relevance of broader structural issues that extend beyond piracy itself. These complexities must be considered when shaping future counter-piracy strategies.
Take, for example, the case of the Niger Delta. To the extent that pirates can sustain themselves (and potentially even expand their criminal activities) through participation in a wider criminal economy, it is significantly likely that they will return to piracy if conditions become favourable or other opportunities narrow. Understanding how different forms of crime intersect with piracy and shape its operational landscape is central to rethinking future counter-piracy efforts.
Second, efforts focused solely on law enforcement merely displace criminal activity. The response has shown that if criminal groups can secure logistics, arms and other resources necessary to engage in maritime crime, they will regroup and strike again when they have the motivation and the opportunity. Further, pirate financiers are not necessarily based in the country where piracy occurs, and often invest funds elsewhere (World Bank, 2013), showing the importance of dismantling entire criminal networks across land and sea borders.
Third, crime convergence is commonplace in the maritime domain as maritime transport infrastructure is often used by criminal networks to move illicit commodities of many kinds. This takes advantage of the masses of goods moved at sea, shipped anonymously, both in open water and through ports (Rasmussen & Jacobsen, 2024). Criminal networks are just as likely to diversify when conditions allow as their counterparts in legitimate business. This is why securing the maritime domain and maritime infrastructure in its entirety is more important than suppressing individual crimes. The importance of cooperation with private industry is key to achieving this and should start long before vessels take to the seas. Private industry, shipping and fishing companies, for example, are the key players in global trade and continued compliance with Best Management Practices (BMP) is therefore important.
The impacts of these other maritime crimes are most acutely felt ashore, by regional states. Piracy, but also other forms of maritime crime, has great cost to African coastal states and communities (Bell et al. 2021). These costs exacerbate an already precarious situation for many African coastal states and communities, who are simultaneously grappling with environmental degradation, climate change, and IUU fishing, factors that deprive millions of their livelihoods and access to adequate nutrition (Okafor-Yarwood, 2019, Mahmood, 2024). Likewise, these threats also put further pressure on the continent’s under-resourced law enforcement entities and contribute to deteriorating local conditions, depriving African coastal states of critical resources that could otherwise have supported efforts to combat piracy. Yet despite these threats originating in other world regions, African states, often the least-resourced, are mostly expected to respond to them without assistance (Bruwer, 2019).
Fourth, many instruments reflect African states’ commitment to cooperation, pooling their resources in their efforts to address maritime threats. States are also increasingly using maritime domain awareness technology to better monitor incidents in their maritime domains. But without the assets required to effectively respond to these incidents at sea, cooperation at sea is impossible. While there are regional mechanisms like the DCOC, the CGIMA, and the Yaoundé Architecture capable of facilitating cooperation and coordination, there are too few maritime assets to coordinate. This is illustrated in the limited regional maritime law enforcement cooperation in response to piracy.
Conclusion
Universal jurisdiction should afford an effective response to piracy. But experience demonstrates that maritime crime cannot be addressed in isolation. The maritime domain is inherently transnational. Counter-piracy initiatives have shown what can be achieved through pooled resources and collaborative forms of crime governance, often while minimizing bureaucratic constraints. Cooperative responses of this kind are held to be successful because they have met their maritime objectives by detecting, preventing, and intercepting attacks at sea. The resurgence of successful pirate attacks, however, demonstrates the limits of an exclusively sea-based approach. Maritime threats cannot be contained at sea alone when land-based drivers, such as weak institutions of governance, corruption, and socioeconomic conditions that foster illegality, remain unaddressed. Although African states are no longer sea blind and actively attempt to isolate threats at sea, doing so remains extremely challenging in the absence of sufficient maritime assets to project power beyond land.
There is little doubt that the regional security architecture has improved since the onset of piracy. Capacity-building efforts have improved the criminal justice systems of regional states, which now understand the importance of securing their maritime domains. But if one considers counter-piracy’s limited impact on other crimes plaguing Africa’s oceans, the incentives for engaging in maritime crime persist. If the conditions that allow criminal actors to access and exploit the ocean and vessels for ill-intended purposes persist, maritime criminality will not cease. In the face of governance failures, and even government complicity, new threats will continue to emerge in the maritime domain.
Notes
[1] For literature reviews on Somali piracy, see, for example, Bruwer (2021); Jacobsen and Larsen (2019); Jacobsen and Nordby (2015); and Shortland (2015).
[2] For a more detailed history of state formation in Somalia, see Clapham (2017), Leeson (2007), Menkhaus (2009) and Solomon (2014).
[3] See also Persson et al. (2015).
[4] In the Gulf of Guinea, the modus operandi primarily consists of selling stolen cargo, but this model would not be effective in the WIO since Somalia and the Horn do not have a local market for stolen cargo; see, for example, Hastings (2009); Zwolski & Kaunert (2014).
[5] Gilmer (2016, 2017) shows that patronage relations and Somali gender norms also contribute to shaping both Somali piracy and counter-piracy initiatives.
[6] Other responses comprised self-protection measures by the shipping industry, forums that cut across institutions and industry (e.g., the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction [SHADE] forum) and general development efforts.
[7] Pirates have however only been transferred to Somaliland and Puntland since the FGS has not yet passed a piracy law.
[8] Kamal-Deen, Jacobsen & Rasmussen. (forthcoming) make this argument with regards to piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
[9] See also for a review of the historical phases of Gulf of Guinea piracy: Kamal-Deen (2015); Jacobsen & Sernia 2021.
[10] The case of the tanker Maximus, hijacked on 11 February 2016, 70 nm south of Abidjan inside the EEZ of Ivory Coast, and released off Nigeria’s coast, marks the end of tanker hijackings. The Nigerian navy intercepted the vessel on 19 February 2016 after an extensive naval operation; some pirates were arrested.
Acknowledgements
This article is the result of collaborative efforts between Katja Lindskov Jacobsen, Carina Bruwer and Amanda Møller Rasmussen. The introduction, recommendations, and conclusion are the result of several rounds of dynamic exchanges and include work from all three authors. While all authors provided feedback on other parts of the article, the section on Somalia was authored by Carina Bruwer, and the section on the Gulf of Guinea was written by Amanda Møller Rasmussen and Katja Lindskov Jacobsen.
Competing Interests
I am currently interim director and hence involved with the Journal but have not yet participated in any meetings and may not be in this position for much longer (a new director is found in June) hence I see no conflict of interest