The transformation in the shift captured under From Chaos to Control is indicative of a more profound change in the patterns of action of armed groups in the fragmented conflict regions of Africa. By 2025, insurgent groups in the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin and coastal borderlands had shifted more towards systematic mechanisms of economic extraction as opposed to opportunistic violence. Instead of using the occasional raids or external funding, the groups like JNIM, ISGS, and ISWAP established their own taxation systems that transformed the territory into a predictable source of income.
This shift is closely interconnected with the process of degradation of state power in large rural and border areas. When the governments decreased or pulled out as a result of coups, overstretched armies or regional disintegration, the armed groups occupied the ensuing governance gap. What was born was not merely anarchy, but an analogous regime of rule where taxation, the provision of security, and mediation of conflicts, were combined instruments of power.
Revenue systems embedded in territorial control
In reality, insurgent taxation works via foreseeable frameworks utilized on the trades, farming, mining, and travel corridors. JNIM and ISGS have institutionalised levies on the movement of livestock and gold transport in northern Mali and Niger, with the levies frequently being standardised, to establish a sort of informal fiscal order. These systems had the capacity to produce tens of millions of dollars each year by 2025 making them sustainable and able to operate without depending on outside donors.
The economic reasoning of this system is easy to understand yet of strategic importance. The movement control routes guarantee uninterrupted revenues, whereas carefully chosen enforcement ensures adherence without necessarily involving regular massive violence. Taxation has become so accepted that it is used not as a form of extortion but as an alternative form of administration in many parts of the world.
Sahel Extraction Systems and the Consolidation of Militant Economies
Northern Sahel regions illustrate how insurgent groups have turned natural resource economies into structured revenue engines. Artisanal gold mining zones in Gao, Menaka, and surrounding areas provide high-value targets for taxation and control. Armed actors regulate extraction points, oversee transport chains, and impose levies that are integrated into commodity flows reaching external markets.
Alongside mining, pastoral economies remain central to insurgent financing strategies. Herding routes crossing Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali are taxed through “protection” arrangements that allow mobility in exchange for payment. These systems are not random; they are standardized across territories and enforced consistently, creating predictable income streams that stabilize insurgent budgets even under military pressure.
Governance effects of extraction-based control
This growth of these systems has had governance-like effects in places where the state does not exist or is being challenged. Governed by armed forces, land conflicts, and contracts among merchants are becoming more controlled and regulated by armed forces and rules that govern market conduct. Although these structures are coercive, they bring some level of order which communities can count on in the volatile environment.
This twofold character of coercion and control is indicative of a more general transformation in the insurgent approach. Groups are also moving towards a more land-based conquest of economic ecosystems rather than concentrating on territorial conquest. The strategy will decrease the operational exposure and enhance resilience even during counterterrorism campaigns or a change in political alliances.
Lake Chad Basin and Institutionalized Revenue Governance
ISWAP has come up with one of the most organized systems of insurgent taxation on the continent in the Lake Chad Basin. Island and lake shore fishing communities have to pay money levies on the daily catch, fuel usage, and routes. Such incomes ensure steady funding to maintain insurgency activity such as hundreds of attacks documented in 2025.
Markets in insurgent-controlled regions are also controlled by imposing fees to traders and transporters every week. This regime breeds economic dependence whereby business operations are subject to military obedience. In the long run, these schemes lessen opposition by making taxation a component of the economic framework.
Administrative structures and local legitimacy
The strategy of ISWAP goes beyond the collection of revenue to basic governance functions. The use of Sharia-based systems of dispute resolution, systems of food distribution and local enforcement systems helps in a kind of proto-administration. Although coercive, these systems lower transaction costs to residents with a system that promotes compliance by predictability and not coercion.
This leads to a hybrid system of governance where the insurgents exercise an economic, judicial and security-based system of governance. This organization has helped ISWAP to be resilient in its operations amid consistent counterinsurgency pressure in northeastern Nigeria and beyond.
Coastal Expansion and the Extension of Taxation Frontiers
The insurgent taxation systems have spread to the Benin-Niger-Nigeria tri-border region in West Africa in the coastal areas. By 2025, violence in these places had escalated to a lot more with attacks being associated with protection fees that cross-border trade routes charged. These consist of the transportation of livestock, fuel transport and informal trade that supports local economies.
These extraction systems in Benin and other related areas in the northern part of Nigeria have taken the focus of the markets. With assaulted actors, they are incorporated in the already existing grievances of the economic system and they are positioned as a delivery of order and not disorder. This enables them to become part and parcel of local economies without the need to have formal territorial governance.
Fragmentation and opportunity structures
Weaknesses in regional coordination in the wake of the breakdown of multilateral security arrangements have provided conducive environments to growth. Weak intelligence dissemination and fragmented military reaction has enabled taxation networks to cross borders without a lot of opposition. This has been mostly clear after the succession of political transitions and military coups in some Sahel states in the 20242025 period.
Consequently, centralized command structures are increasingly becoming embedded in the coastal states as a result of insurgent economies. These networks can be flexible, decentralized and adapt to changes in security pressures without affecting the core revenue flows.
State Response Constraints and the Limits of Military Pressure
The reaction of states in the affected areas continues to largely depend on kinetic operations, such as raids, airstrikes, and attacks on leaders. Although all these can temporarily interrupt the insurgent activity, more often they do not interfere with the economic systems of the background. The networks of taxation are likely to be restored fairly fast because of their decentralization and strong localization within local economies.
Sanctions or freezing of assets are only marginally effective in a situation where transactions are mainly done in cash and where there is a system of informal trade. Military pressure alone has a hard time ousting established revenue systems without parallel government restoration.
In a number of instances, bilateral cooperation programs and local intelligence sharing have been more productive than larger regional programs. Nevertheless, they are not large enough to combat geographic dispersion and economic flexibility of insurgent tax systems.
Economic Embedding and the Persistence of Parallel Governance
The broader trajectory outlined a structural shift in the nature of insurgency. Armed groups are no longer operating solely as violent challengers to the state but as embedded economic actors within fragile systems. Their resilience is increasingly tied to their ability to regulate trade, extract value, and provide minimal governance functions.
By 2025, this model had become a defining feature of conflict economies across the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, and coastal West Africa. The implications extend beyond security concerns into questions of political economy, state legitimacy, and long-term governance capacity in fragile regions.
As taxation systems deepen their reach into trade corridors, mining zones, and coastal markets, the central analytical challenge becomes whether states can reconstruct authority in spaces where armed actors have already institutionalized economic order. The trajectory of these systems suggests that future stability will depend not only on territorial recovery but on the ability to replace or outcompete the economic infrastructures that sustain insurgent control.
