All news on the topic: West Africa

A Guinea-Bissau fisheries assessment obtained by OCCRP shows that the sardinella — an important food source — has been decimated in the years since two Chinese fishmeal-production vessels set up shop offshore.

AI now powers more than half of reported cybercrimes across 26 African nations as phishing and mobile fraud transition into industrialized criminal enterprises, according to INTERPOL.

The UK has been warned the country risks becoming a hub for illegal drugs after a string of cocaine busts more than 3,000 miles away.

A British actress, who appeared in an Eastenders spin-off and a Jason Statham movie, has been charged with trying to smuggle 320kg of meth into Australia from West Africa.

The UK has turned to AI to determine ages of asylum seekers, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Our investigation finds the technology is deeply unreliable.

Sierra Leone lawmakers are frustrated after Spanish authorities told OCCRP that fugitive Dutch trafficker Joseph Leijdekkers allegedly directed a 30-ton cocaine shipment from West Africa. Leijdekkers has not been charged.

Indian companies have shipped more than 320 million synthetic opioid pills to West Africa – where they have not been approved by regulators – over the past three years, a Bellingcat investigation has found.

On a cool cloudless morning at the break of dawn last December, authorities spotted two speed boats carrying a number of large packages at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in southwest Spain.

The French navy has seized nearly 10 tonnes of cocaine worth close to €519 million from a fishing vessel off the coast of West Africa, French authorities said on Thursday, September 25.

Last summer, a woman was arrested at Gatwick Airport after she arrived from Nigeria with a very young baby girl.

The Netherlands has formally requested the extradition of convicted drug criminal Jos Leijdekkers, a notorious figure in international drug trafficking.

Sources have located Johannes Leijdekkers in the West African country since at least December 2022.

Record-breaking cocaine seizures in Portugal in 2024 have cemented the country’s status as a crucial axis in drug trafficking routes into Europe.

While the beautiful beaches and palm trees are aplenty, it’s the local young men that elderly British tourists are seemingly on the hunt for when they travel to Gambia on holiday

The Nigerian president’s son owned an offshore company with the son of a tycoon who recently received the contract to build a 700-kilometer highway spanning the West African country’s coast, leaked corporate documents reveal.

Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau have authorized a Swiss-based civil society organization to facilitate chemical testing of a drug that is wreaking havoc in West Africa and has prompted the president of Sierra Leone to declare a national emergency.

Beny Steinmetz’s company obtained iron ore deposits worth billions thanks to bribes paid to the wife of a West African president.