Organised crime and fragile states : African variations.
Date: 2017-04-04
Institutions: European Union Institute for Security Studies
Subjects: Africa, fight against crime, foreign policy, international security, organised crime

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Organised crime and fragile states 
African variations   
by Luca Raineri and Francesco Strazzari

Exactly  how  transnational  organised  crime  (TOC) 
poses a security threat that may undermine the state, 
including its societal institutions, geopolitical stabil-
ity  and  economic  prosperity,  is  a  question  that  has 
gained traction in public debates over the past dec-
ades.  And  discussions  about  extra-legal  governance 
–  i.e.  those  political,  economic  and  social  arrange-
ments that take shape beyond and against the law – 
are very much present in Africa, where states are of-
ten portrayed as defective. Such discussions are often 
articulated through dichotomies, such as fragility vs. 
resilience,  good  governance  vs.  ungoverned  spaces, 
and legal vs. criminal activity. Frequently inspired by 
abstract  templates  and  moral  logics,  these  dichoto-
mies sometimes rest on the use of loose concepts, and 
hardly  convey  the  meaning  given  to  them  by  those 
people who deal with them in their daily lives.  

Understanding organised crime

While debates on good governance and fragility stem 
from  the  world  of  development  research  and  prac-
tice, the concept of ungoverned space belongs to the 
sphere of security doctrines and strategies. In 2011, 
the  World  Bank’s  World  Development  Report  cast 
a  bridge  between  them  and  called  to  acknowledge 
“the repetitive and interlinked nature of conflict, and 
the increasing challenge of organised crime […] for 
development”. The report claimed that fragile states 

represent a serious challenge to international secu-
rity,  given  their  incapacity  to  counter  sovereignty 
contenders that are nestled within their own terri-
tory,  including  criminal  organisations  and  terrorist 
networks. In the meantime, scholars have been put-
ting  forward  theories  on  the  nexus  between  TOC 
and  armed  conflict/civil  wars  as  well  as  TOC  and 
terrorism. 

Ten  years  after  the  1994  Washington  Convention 
on  Organised  Crime,  the  UN  High-Level  Panel  on 
Threats,  Challenges  and  Change  ranked  organised 
crime  among  the  top-10  global  security  priorities. 
In  the  following  decade,  TOC  was  mentioned  in 
77  resolutions  and  presidential  statements  of  the 
UN Security Council: 83% of these mentions relate 
to  countries  or  regions  in  Africa.  In  the  following 
years,  the  key  terms  of  the  debate  have  remained 
significantly vague. Regarding Africa, in particular, 
perception  surveys  show  that  legal  and  scholarly 
definitions tend to diverge sharply from local under-
standings and practices. A basis for consensus lies in 
the acknowledgement that organised crime should 
be defined in light of its economic, social and politi-
cal context, but the specificities of organised crime 
in Africa remain unclear – whereas research on the 
Italian  mafia  or  the  Japanese  Yakuza,  for  instance, 
has  managed  to  combine  individual  specificities 
with cross-case comparisons and generalisations. 

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European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)March 2017 
 
 
‘Given the challenges, understanding 
(and tackling) organised crime in 
Africa requires systematic reflection 
and granular analysis combined with 
creativity, strategic thinking and 
nuanced responses.’

The lack of reliable data complicates things further. 
Due to its clandestine nature and the elusiveness of its 
operations, uncertainty about evidence is a structural 
characteristic of organised crime at all levels – and all 
the more so in Africa, where the reliability of available 
statistics  is  questionable  even  when  they  deal  with 
perfectly legal economic activities. Moreover, the ca-
pacity  to  paint  a  credible  picture  of  undocumented 
political and economic activities in unmonitored re-
mote regions across Africa is limited. It should there-
fore come as no surprise 
that  aggregate  figures 
concerning the extent of 
criminal  phenomena  in 
Africa  typically  vary  by 
up to almost one trillion 
dollars. 

these  challeng-
Given 
es,  understanding  (and 
tackling) 
organised 
crime  in  Africa  requires 
systematic reflection and granular analysis combined 
with  creativity,  strategic  thinking  and  nuanced  re-
sponses. A critical investigation of the link between 
state fragility and TOC is needed in order to detect 
longer-term  trends.  Instead  of  simplistically  seeing 
organised crime as a substitute for the state in condi-
tions where the latter is weak or captured and the ter-
ritory is ungoverned, the focus should arguably shift 
towards  ‘hybrid’  orders  and  micro-political  econo-
mies. Since the colonial era, the rise of the state has 
indeed  been  mediated  by  (various)  sovereign  prac-
tices coming to terms with local interests and hierar-
chies.  Comparative  historical  sociology  focusing  on 
the dynamics of protection and extraction can thus 
help assess the role of organised crime in the making 
– and unmaking – of the state in Africa.

Predators, parasites, facilitators

Examining  organised  crime  means  addressing  the 
question  of  extra-legal  governance  structures,  their 
business  models,  their  social  embeddedness,  and 
how they relate to formal state authorities. Organised 
crime  does  not  inevitably  feature  a  confrontational 
relationship  with  the  state,  and  is  not  necessarily 
bound to drift towards violence. Instead, the relation-
ship between criminal groups and the state is subject 
to significant variation and evolution across time and 
space, ranging from predatory to parasitic and sym-
biotic models. 

Criminal trajectories can be seen evolving from ser-
vice  provision  to  mediation,  as  well  as  alliance  and 
symbiosis with formal power wielders. In this frame-
work, organised crime may be seen as a sector of ac-
tivity, not necessarily a distinct actor in its own right: 

criminal actors may find incentives to operate in legal 
markets,  while  perfectly  legal  economic  or  political 
actors may have incentives to operate in criminal sec-
tors. 

The  following  can  be  looked  at  in  order  to  under-
stand how organised crime affects fragility: the state’s 
monopoly of coercion, the administration of justice, 
the  degree  of  administrative  capacity,  the  provision 
of public goods, and conflict management. The log-
ics  of  and  pressures  for 
protection  and  taxation 
are  typically  more  co-
gent and pervasive where 
uncertainty  is  high  and 
formal  authority  is  un-
able  or  unwilling  to  de-
liver  public  goods,  be-
ginning with security (of 
individuals, 
communi-
ties,  business  activities). 
Even  before  consider-
ing  it  a  criminal  enterprise  per  se,  the  provision  of 
security  on  a  private  basis  could  be  seen  as  a  form 
of parasitic contract enforcement, a guarantee of the 
predictability of transactions through the imposition 
of  some  form  of  compliance.  In  these  cases,  terms 
such as ‘violent entrepreneurs’ may be more accurate 
reflections  of  reality  than  an  imported  reference  to 
the notion of organised crime. Needless to say, such 
an actor has a vested interest in the reproduction of 
the conditions that nurture its own rise: uncertainty, 
poor regulation, selective implementation and – as a 
profit booster – a broad sector of activities and com-
modities that, despite being criminalised, are in high 
demand. 

Organised  crime  can  thrive  when  a  given  type  of 
activity,  although  illegal,  is  considered  socially  le-
gitimate, and therefore able to generate large profits 
which,  in  turn,  fosters  social  mobility  and  political 
influence. Situations like this include: border regions, 
where  the  presence  of  sharp  economic  differentials 
feeds informal economies, and peripheral or remote 
regions, where central authorities are more likely to 
strike informal power deals to ensure loyalty in ex-
change  for  turning  a  blind  eye  to  extra-legal  activi-
ties. Similarly, while the export of raw commodities 
represents the core business of several African fragile 
states, criminal actors are highly likely to step in and 
ensure intermediation between international markets 
and  extractive  industries  at  local  level  –  especially 
where regulations might be absent or too strict vis-à-
vis economic appetites and opportunities. 

In some circumstances, however, criminal organisa-
tions may have the power to increase social vulner-
ability and destabilise society: a vast sector of illicit 

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European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)March 2017economy  is  hardly  reconcilable  with  investment  in 
infrastructure,  social  services  and  redistribution. 
Likewise, the arrival of proceedings from illicit activi-
ties  is  highly  likely  to  distort  the  way  local  markets 
function:  some  actors  will  rise  while  others  will  be 
pushed to the margins. And harming the functional 
integrity of the state or its international reputation is 
an important part of the debate, too.

Taken all together, these aspects illustrate the need to 
pay attention to grey areas where collusion and con-
nivance are the rule. In other words, focusing on local 
practice, rather than on deviance from a norm defined 
according  to  abstract  legal  frameworks,  is  crucial  to 
understand properly the impact of organised crime in 
fragile African states.

Destabiliser or stabiliser?

It  is  far  from  clear  why,  how,  and  even  whether  the 
proliferation of organised crime in fragile states leads 
to soaring violence and instability. While profitable il-
legal markets bred violence and even armed conflict 
and civil wars in a few well-known high-profile cases 
(such  as  emerald  mining  in  Sierra  Leone  and  gold 
mining  in  eastern  Congo),  the  correlation  between 
the most widespread forms of organised criminal ac-
tivities in Africa (such as illegal logging, fisheries de-
pletion and tobacco smuggling) and the inception or 
reproduction of politically destabilising forms of vio-
lence is less straightforward. Similarly, the degree of 
criminal violence associated to wildlife poaching var-
ies dramatically across different African contexts and 
states. 

Recent research shows how other forms of organised 
crime, in Africa as elsewhere, are not always overtly 
violent  and  defiant  but  can  serve  as  a  tool  of  social 
control  and,  therefore,  stabilisation.  Unsurprisingly, 
the  provision  of  protection  on  a  private  and  extra-
legal basis can reveal patterns of cooperation – rather 
than competition – vis-à-vis distant state authorities, 
to the extent that it may contribute to extending ter-
ritorial control in peripheral regions. State actors have 
been  known  to  actively  promote  the  dismissal  of 
many of their own functions to the benefit of private 
and criminal actors, including in the realm of security. 
Nigeria’s  Delta  region,  Mali’s  north  or  South  Africa’s 
suburbs  represent  examples  of  these  dynamics.  In 
many cases, including in the Sahara-Sahel peripher-
ies, state authorities have secured the loyalty of local 
and traditional elites by turning a blind eye to their 
involvement  in  illicit  economies,  such  as  the  smug-
gling of goods. 

In other words, in the short term organised crime may 
contribute to stabilising, rather than destabilising, the 
hybrid  order  of  fragile  states.  This  state  of  affairs  is 

likely to continue as long as political imperatives do 
not change or new factors do not emerge – e.g. exoge-
nous shocks such as price changes, new technologies, 
new political priorities, new actors – do not alter the 
status quo, thereby revealing its fragile foundations.

This collusion (or symbiosis) between states and or-
ganised  criminal  actors  is  reflected  in  the  growing 
literature  on  non-state  security  providers  in  African 
state-building and suggests a focus is needed not only 
on warlordism and gangsterism but also on the spe-
cific dynamics of protection which often remain be-
low the radar. 

Captured or capturing?

Criminal organisations have reportedly stockpiled an 
unprecedented  amount  of  resources.  UN  Office  of 
Drugs  and  Crime  threat  assessments  point  out  that 
the  estimated  GDP  of  organised  criminal  networks 
can outweigh that of some sovereign states in Africa. 
Scholars  and  policymakers  often  use  the  image  of 
‘state capture’ to interpret political instability, violence 
and  coup  d’états.  Borrowed  from  studies  on  transi-
tion economies, the idea of state capture suggests that 
fragile  states  cannot  resist  the  pressure  of  powerful 
criminal  groups  which  pursue  their  interests  by  hi-
jacking state institutions and distorting policymaking, 
therefore  hollowing  out  basic  rule  of  law  principles 
and practices. In other words, state capture denotes 
an extreme version of clientelist or patrimonialist ap-
propriation of the state by illicit criminal groups. In 
the most extreme cases, state capture may reach law 
enforcement agencies and the military. 

However,  the  vision  of  a  brutal  capture  of  the  state 
by external forces is often superficial, and may have 
misleading implications. By contrast, researchers have 
tried to sharpen their focus on the intimacy that of-
ten links – rather than oppose – state apparatuses and 
criminal  actors  devoted  to  plundering  resources  or 
circulating  illicit  commodities.  More  often  than  not, 
the degree of state interdiction or indulgence is a cost 
factored in by those who run criminal activities: cap-
turing and maintaining the state entails high costs, and 
many other options are preferable to this one. Yet state 
authorities exerting the legitimate monopoly of force 
and  retaining  some  control  of  borders  may  also  be-
come embroiled in the organisation of criminal activi-
ties, attracted by the disproportionate profits. In other 
words, fragile states can be expected to be captured by 
organised crime as much as to be capturing criminals. 
As a result, less attention needs to be paid to the al-
leged competition between state and non-state actors 
and more to their welding and convergences.

Illegal  profits,  in  fact,  stimulate  hybrid  assembling. 
criminal/political  entrepreneurs  favour  economic 

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European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)March 2017development,  including  in  legal  sectors,  and  invest 
in schemes of social protection to buy consensus and 
secure  their  own  impunity.  Strongmen  enriched  by 
criminal activities thus become indispensable politi-
cal actors and are coopted in the networks of patron-
age  politics  structuring  African  governance  in  both 
liberal and authoritarian regimes. However, the sys-
tem of corruption fed by criminal revenues severely 
impacts local dynamics of legitimacy and social mo-
bility  and  exacerbates  existing  cleavages  while  fos-
tering new ones. The ‘criminalisation of the state’ in 
Africa thus calls into question the contract ensuring 
the stability of the social fabric and can undermine 
the stability of the states.

The political economy of organised crime

Within fragile African states, organised crime proves 
socially  embedded  and  extremely  resilient  mainly 
thanks to its capacity to exploit rapidly changing pat-
terns of profit-making. In the broad basket of extra-
legal economies, greater attention should be paid to 
the important – albeit sometimes porous – line that 
separates  informality  from  crime.  While  crime  can 
generate security threats, informality often represents 
a  strategy  for  the  survival  of  the  many  in  a  context 
where only few can experience social mobility – and 
therefore typically enjoys a high degree of social le-
gitimacy. However, the huge profits granted by crimi-
nal activities (including the trafficking of illicit goods 
such  as  drugs  and  weapons)  discourage  alternative 
economic initiatives and undermine less threatening 
businesses, whether formal or informal. 

As with diamonds and gold, drugs are extremely re-
munerative  items  whose  value  chain  is  not  too  dif-
ficult to protect. Yet, inevitably, tempting profits stir 
competition:  in  a  sector  which  by  definition  lacks 
legal  avenues  for  protection  and  dispute  resolu-
tion (even more so within a fragile state), protection 
quickly assumes the form of a racket, which in turn 
attracts arms trafficking, eventually leading to a pro-
gressive  (para)militarisation  of  society.  Available  re-
search suggests that, within fragile states, this is more 
likely to result in widespread violence and instability, 
and that deeply rooted organised crime makes con-
flicts  last  longer,  sabotages  peace  negotiations  and 
impedes security sector reforms. 

As long as illicit profits are disproportionately higher 
than those of legal activities, success will only be spo-
radic  and  elusive,  while  indiscriminate  criminalisa-
tion of alleged ‘narco-terrorists’ can equally crystallise 
the status quo. Both policymakers and scholars have 
proposed  to  grant  more  or  less  explicit  amnesties 
to  criminal  cartels,  provided  they  do  not  engage  in 
spoiling  peace-processes,  thereby  undermining  the 
stability  of  the  state.  While  initiatives  decoupling 

relatively harmless smugglers from more threatening 
armed actors may prove quite effective for short-term 
stabilisation, in the longer term they risk to legitimise 
power-sharing arrangements that could be perceived 
as corrupt by significant segments of the population, 
ultimately  eroding  the  very  legitimacy  of  the  state. 
By resting on strongmen conspicuously enriched by 
criminal profits, the consolidation of patronage net-
works  may  undermine  the  credibility  of  redistribu-
tive schemes and exacerbate the dynamics of exclu-
sion.  This  can  pave  the  way  to  radical  contestation 
invoking the advent of alternative sources of justice, 
including religious ones, to replace a secular politi-
cal system seen as inherently corrupt, unaccountable, 
and even sponsored by the West.

Tackling  the  causes,  rather  than  the  consequences, 
and recognising that in this field responses are high-
ly likely to become part of the problem could help. 
Resorting to amnesties and backroom deals, in fact, 
shows all the limits and the hypocrisy of a purely re-
pressive stance, as demonstrated by the lessons learnt 
in Africa and almost everywhere. The high profits of 
criminal activities depend on thresholds of criminali-
sation,  because  legal  restrictions  tend  to  increase  a 
given  good’s  value  on  the  black  market.  Leveraging 
the thresholds of legality and illegality, therefore, can 
contribute to addressing the root causes of the prob-
lem by making crime less attractive and preventing 
escalations. Similarly, evidence shows that measures 
focusing uniquely on the supply side have systemati-
cally failed to put an end to illegal markets.

Organised  crime  continues  to  be  seen  primarily  as 
a  question  of  law  enforcement,  and  at  best  a  judi-
cial  matter.  Little  effort  is  made  to  acquire  a  com-
prehensive understanding of the phenomenon, its 
political  economy  and  its  ambivalent,  non-linear 
relationship  with  political  violence  and  system 
stability.  Associated  with  the  threat  of  organised 
crime,  the  emphasis  on  the  notion  of  fragile  and 
weak states implicitly refers to the ideal standard 
of  a  strong  state,  whose  normativity  is  taken  for 
granted.  The  elusiveness  of  lasting  results,  how-
ever, should make reconsider the terms of the cur-
rent policy debate and acknowledge that discuss-
ing organised crime means discussing the ‘state of 
the state’ in Africa. 

Luca Raineri is a PhD candidate at the Sant’Anna 
School of Advanced Studies. 

Francesco Strazzari is an Associate Professor of 
International Relations at the Sant’Anna School 
of Advanced Studies and a Senior Associate 
 Analyst at the EUISS. 

© EU Institute for Security Studies | QN-AK-17-008-2A-N | ISBN 978-92-9198-575-3 | ISSN 2315-1110 | doi:10.2815/84981

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European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)March 2017