Africa is rapidly becoming the new heartland of global jihad, as franchises of ISIS , Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda carve out strongholds across the continent, leaving thousands of people dead in their wake. Once isolated insurgencies in remote deserts and jungles have turned into full-blown wars of terror, turning several regions into some of the deadliest battlegrounds in the world. Groups such as Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) continue to wreak havoc in a reign of terror with no end in sight. In 2024, an estimated 18,900 people were slaughtered in attacks linked to militant Islamists, a staggering toll that underscores the continent's growing struggle to contain extremism.

Over the past three years, the annual death toll has averaged more than a third higher than between 2019 and 2021, with many victims bombed, beheaded, stoned to death, or hacked with machetes. Brutal rapes, public executions, and forced marriages have been used to assert dominance in areas controlled by the various groups. The barbarity was laid bare this week when it was revealed that a TikToker, Mariam Cissé, had been savagely slaughtered by jihadists in Mali who accused her of helping the army. Such cruelty is on the rise - the bloodshed and abuse of jihadists in Africa have been concentrated in three main theatres - the Sahel, Somalia, and the Lake Chad Basin, which together accounted for almost every fatality recorded last year.

The Sahel alone, stretching across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, was responsible for more than half of all deaths, making it the bloodiest region for four years in a row. Al Qaeda's main African spearheads are al Shabaab in Somalia and Jama'at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin, known as JNIM, in the Sahel. ISIS operates through a web of 'provinces' in West Africa, the Sahel, Mozambique, Somalia and Libya. In Nigeria, the original Boko Haram movement has splintered into rival factions that now fight both governments and each other. Each group has its own history and local grievances, yet they share common goals - to eject state authority and foreign troops from their zones of operation, impose their hardline vision of Islamic rule and plug themselves into a wider jihadist project.

The JNIM, an Al Qaeda affiliate formed in 2017 that has grown into the most dangerous insurgent force in West Africa, is the most dominant group in the Sahel. It brings together older jihadist outfits that once operated separately in Mali and neighbouring states. Western and regional analysts now estimate JNIM has roughly 6,000 fighters spread across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and into coastal states such as Benin and Togo. The group presents itself as a defender of Muslim communities against abusive security forces and corrupt elites. In practice, it runs a sprawling protection racket, levying taxes on traders and herders, regulating movement on key roads and enforcing its strict social codes in areas under its sway.

JNIM’s stated aim is to drive out foreign militaries, topple Sahelian governments and build a belt of territory governed by its interpretation of Islamic law from the Sahara down towards the Atlantic coast. It has already turned large parts of rural Mali and Burkina Faso into no-go zones for central authorities. Fighters ambush army convoys, mine roads and seize small towns, sometimes cutting deals with local leaders, sometimes wiping out entire villages that resist. In June this year, JNIM claimed responsibility for an assault on a military base in Boulkessi, Mali, that diplomats say killed more than one hundred soldiers. The brutality is not confined to battlefields - civilians have been hunted and slaughtered.

In Burkina Faso, which has become the deadliest country in the Sahel, Africa Centre data suggest that more than six thousand three hundred people died in Islamist violence in 2024, around three-fifths of the Sahel total. In August that year, gunmen linked to JNIM descended on communities near the town of Barsalogho and slaughtered an estimated 400 civilians, believed to be the worst massacre in the country’s history. Survivors spoke of militants going door to door, killing men and boys and burning homes while the army was nowhere to be seen. The group usually burns down entire villages and either shoots or slit the throats of its victims. It has several affiliates, including Ansar Dine, Macina Liberation Front, Al Mourabitoun, and Sahara Emirates of AQIM.

Across the central Sahel, more than four million people are displaced, including some three million citizens of Burkina Faso alone, roughly a tenth of the population. One resident of Ankouna, who survived an attack, said: 'When I returned the next day, the village was still smouldering. [There were] bodies of six people including my brother, who had been shot trying to rescue a child 10 meters from his shop. 'I saw five people including a 70-year-old dead in one house. They’d been shot in the back or head.' It has also been reported that fighters have raped women and girls travelling to markets and fleeing the violence. On the opposite side of the continent, Somalia is home to a number of Islamist militants. In 2024, the country recorded about 4,482 fatalities linked to militant violence.

Al Shabaab, which the United States Africa Command describes as the largest, wealthiest and most lethal Al Qaeda affiliate currently in existence , is the most dominant group in the country. The movement grew out of the Islamic Courts Union that once governed much of southern Somalia and now fields an estimated seven to twelve thousand fighters. Its leadership has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and openly calls for the overthrow of the Somali federal government and the imposition of strict Islamic rule. In areas under its control, the group has carried out some of the most reprehensible atrocities, including a 2017 attack when a massive truck bomb killed 600 people and injured more than 300 in Mogadishu.

Four years before that, in 2013, the group opened fire at the Westgate Mall in Kenya, killing 71 people and injuring 200 in the multi-day siege . In April 2015, they slaughtered 150 people, mostly Christian students, in one of their bloodiest attacks. The group has also targeted hotels where government officials and tourists gather, including the Hotel Hayat, where they executed dozens of people in 2022. In May this year, a suicide bomber posing as a recruit blew himself up at a military enlistment centre in Mogadishu, killing at least thirteen people and wounding many more. Human rights groups have reported that children and women have been brutally raped and forced into marrying fighters. Public executions, amputations, and the recruitment of child soldiers have run rampant.

Alongside Al Shabaab, a small Islamic State cell has taken root in Puntland and the Golis Mountains. Islamic State in Somalia is smaller, with a few hundred fighters, many of them foreign, yet it acts as a financial conduit for ISIS networks, using extortion, smuggling and kidnappings to move cash. Those funds help sustain attacks elsewhere. American airstrikes in mid-2024 and early 2025 have targeted IS bases in Puntland precisely to strike at this money pipeline. The Lake Chad Basin is another brutal arena. In 2024, the Lake Chad Basin recorded roughly 3,627 Islamist-linked deaths, with the majority concentrated in north-east Nigeria. Boko Haram and its breakaway wing, Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP), have left a legacy of abductions, massacres, and scorched villages across northeastern Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon.

Over the past decade, the Lake Chad insurgency has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. The two groups now fight one another as well as governments, and their methods are often grim. Boko Haram became infamous for mass kidnappings, such as the Chibok schoolgirls abduction in 2014, where 276 girls were abducted from their school. Many were forced to convert to Islam, while some were subjected to sexual slavery and physical abuse. Boko Haram have been known to slaughter villagers who resist their demands . Young boys are forced to join or face death, according to several reports. In recent times, the plight of Christian Nigerians at the hands of alleged Islamist militants has drawn worldwide attention and condemnation. In June, 100 Christians, many asleep, were slaughtered in the village of Yelwata in Benue state, according to local reports.

ISWAP has also executed civilians accused of spying and has blown up marketplaces and destroyed entire villages. They also collect taxes from poor residents and use brutality to enforce their rules. Northern Cameroon has seen a sharp rise in attacks, producing wave after wave of displacement and civilian death. Banditry in north-west Nigeria has further blurred the lines between criminal violence and jihadist terror, with non-ideological gangs responsible for thousands of additional killings. Other militant groups present in the region include Ansaru, also known as Jama'atu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan. Northern Mozambique’s insurgency is branded by ISIS, yet it is a distinctly local catastrophe. The group known locally as al-Shabaab, formally Ahlu Sunnah wal Jamaa, carved out a deadly campaign in Cabo Delgado beginning in 2017.

After a lull, the violence returned with a vengeance, producing 349 Islamist-linked deaths in 2024. What makes the Mozambican conflict particularly harrowing is the deliberate targeting of civilians. Thirty-one per cent of fatalities there were the result of attacks on non-combatants, the highest proportion recorded for any Islamist theatre in Africa. Militants beheaded villagers, set homes alight and attacked health clinics and schools. In late July 2024, a series of coordinated strikes forced more than 46,000 people to flee in a single week. Many of the displaced are children who have seen neighbours murdered and who, rights groups have warned, will face long-term hunger, disease and trauma. North Africa remains quieter by comparison, but the danger persists. Islamist remnants in southern Libya across Algeria's borderlands remain active in smuggling and kidnapping networks.

The Islamic State in Libya remains active and committed many of its atrocities between 2015 and 2016 when it controlled the city of Sirte. During that time, public beheadings, abductions, the exploitation of children, and the persecution of minorities were commonplace. In Algeria, there is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, with a long history of war crimes and barbaric activities, including deadly bombings, massacres, and kidnappings for ransom. Beyond these dominant factions, smaller but deadly movements are taking root elsewhere. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the Allied Democratic Forces, rebranded by ISIS as Islamic State Central Africa Province, continues to massacre civilians in Ituri and North Kivu. The group has killed hundreds in raids on villages and bombings in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. In July this year, more than 40 people were killed in the northeastern part of the DRC. Most of them were Christian worshippers taking part in a night vigil.

Nine of them were children. In that attack, businesses were looted and set on fire. The group rose to prominence in the 1990s after it accused the government of persecuting Muslims. Mass graves have also been discovered in regions where the group have slaughtered hundreds of people. In September, at least 50 people attending a funeral were hacked to death with machetes in eastern Congo by the ADF. In Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Wilayat Sinai, another ISIS affiliate, has been weakened by years of military operations but still carries out occasional ambushes and roadside bombings. A few other micro-cells exist in Sudan and the Central African Republic, claiming ties to ISIS but with little proven capacity. Though smaller in scale, these networks show that militant Islamism has now spread to almost every corner of the continent.

Governments across the continent have condemned the various atrocities and pledged to do more to combat the crisis - yet, the situation appears to be worsening. Experts have noted that poverty and dissatisfaction with governments remain some of the biggest factors that influence recruitment into Islamist militant groups in Africa. Many of the regions under siege are among the poorest and most neglected in the world. Corruption and weak governance have hollowed out state institutions, leaving millions with little faith in their leaders. In vast rural areas, where government presence is minimal, extremist groups have stepped in to offer rough justice, employment, and protection, often backed by threats of brutal violence.