The conclusions of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) report are clear: between 2019 and 2021, jihadist groups located in the north of Côte d’Ivoire enriched themselves through illicit activities. “The north-east of Côte d’Ivoire served as a theater of operations and a zone of refuge, settlement, financing, recruitment” for these groups, who mainly enriched themselves through “illegal gold panning and livestock economy,” the report said.
The ISS underlines that the investment of these groups in these areas has “occupied a central place” in their “implantation strategy”. “Cattle breeding represents, after agriculture and before mining and trade, one of the main socio-economic activities practiced along the border strip between Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and the Mali”, two countries undermined by jihadist violence, according to the report.
Herd theft
“Unsupervised herds are particularly targeted” and “cattle thieves sometimes also benefit from the complicity of herdsmen (…) in exchange for financial remuneration,” he specifies. The north of Côte d’Ivoire is also home to numerous illegal gold mining sites, popular with jihadist groups which “would also have served” as “places to supply food and other consumer goods”, according to the ISS.
The institute suggests to the Ivorian authorities to “strengthen the systems for controlling the origin and traceability of livestock”, sometimes transported to Abidjan, and to “regulate the artisanal gold mining sector”, in particular by reducing “the costs of obtaining operating authorizations”. From the end of 2021 to July 2023, “no significant attack has been noted” in Ivory Coast, faced with jihadist violence since 2016, notes the ISS.