Webinar | Extraction under fire: How mining reshapes conflict in the Sahel

While mining is often viewed primarily as a source of revenue for armed groups, ACLED's latest research shows that its role extends far beyond financing conflict. Areas around mining have become strategic spaces where armed groups, state forces, mining companies, and local communities compete for influence, territorial control, and access to resources. Violence is no longer confined to extraction sites themselves, but increasingly spreads across transport corridors, surrounding settlements, artisanal mining areas, and commercial hubs that sustain mining activities.

ACLED, the GI-TOC and the International Land Coalition gathered on Thursday, 23 July, at 2:00 p.m. London (3:00 p.m. Brussels), as West Africa Senior Analyst Héni Nsaibia drew on new ACLED research to examine how jihadist groups exploit mining economies to finance their operations, strengthen territorial control, and wage economic warfare against the states they are fighting. Joining him was Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo, Director of the West Africa Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, who examined the intersection between armed groups and the mining economy. Drawing on GI-TOC's research, examined how illicit mining economies, criminal networks, and governance dynamics interact with armed actors and violence.

Moderated by Jeremy Bourgoin of the International Land Coalition, this conversation brought together perspectives on conflict analysis and illicit economies to examine how mining is reshaping security, governance, and livelihoods across the Sahel.