By Iain Overton on 9 May 2025
There is a quiet war spreading across West Africa. It has no fixed front lines, no tanks crushing border posts, no globally televised declarations. But it is as deadly and destabilising as any conventional conflict. And at the heart of this war is what some are calling the 21st century’s “weapon of mass destruction”: the improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Such IEDs are turning already fragile states into hollow shells, communities into ghost towns, and – in some places – governance into something else, far darker.
In the past decade, IEDs have quietly become the most destructive weapon used in Africa’s growing theatre of violent extremism. These are not the industrialised munitions of global superpowers, but crude, locally manufactured devices. They are gas bottles rigged with wires, jerry cans packed with explosives, remote-detonated traps buried under the sand. Yet, as American and British troops found in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are every bit as lethal. And, as AOAV’s data has shown nearly half of all explosive ordnance casualties worldwide in the last decade were caused by IEDs. And about two-thirds of those killed or maimed were civilians.
This is the world. In West Africa, the IED dominates.
Despite the staggering human toll, the use of improvised explosive devices in West Africa has received comparatively limited attention in English-language media. This absence of coverage is stark when compared with government figures, but what has been reported (and captured by AOAV’s Explosive Monitor) is about one third of the harm actually on the ground. AOAV has detailed over 13,000 casualties recorded from 661 IED incidents between 2011 and 2024, with civilians accounting for 80% of the deaths and injuries.
In Nigeria alone, more than 9,700 civilians have been reported harmed in English language media, representing 90% of all IED-related casualties in the country. Civilian deaths from IEDs peaked in 2015—when nearly 2,800 Nigerians were reported killed or injured—and this is just what gets to the news. Most of these events barely register in news cycles. Even as IED attacks increased again in 2024, with a 177% rise in civilian casualties in Nigeria, the global media focus remained elsewhere. Suicide attacks, 85% of which occurred in Nigeria, accounted for 96% of all civilian deaths caused by suicide bombings in the region.
But beyond Nigeria, the toll is equally devastating. English language media in Mali has reported 125 recorded IED incidents between 2011 and 2024, with 379 civilians harmed, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. In Niger, 112 civilians have been recorded as victims, with the majority of these incidents concentrated between 2013 and 2019 – again a major under-reporting by all accounts.
This invisibility has consequences. It obscures the severity of the crisis, limits public awareness, and dilutes international pressure for effective counter-IED strategies. Suicide bombings—39% of all IED attacks in the region—have disproportionately struck urban centres, marketplaces, mosques, and transport hubs. Markets alone accounted for nearly 2,500 civilian casualties, with places of worship adding more than 1,800 more. These attacks are not only devastating but deliberate, and yet their frequency and lethality remain under-reported. Boko Haram alone has been responsible for over 3,200 civilian reported casualties, the vast majority of which occurred in Nigeria, but their reach has also extended into Niger. Meanwhile, groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen (JNIM) and ISIS affiliates continue to perpetrate bombings in Mali and Burkina Faso. Yet, outside of a fleeting mention or wire report, these incidents rarely pierce the editorial priorities of international outlets.
What should be treated as a regional emergency is too often relegated to the margins of global concern.
And in the mayhem, Burkina Faso is among the hardest hit. The first recorded use of IEDs there was in October 2016. Since then, the use of such devices has soared. Between April 2024 and March 2025, according to official data that APAV has seen, there were 307 IED incidents recorded, including 127 in the first quarter of 2025 alone. These attacks killed 70 civilians and injured 46 more. In total, since 2017, at least 1,627 people have been killed or injured by IEDs far, far more than were reported upon by English language media, in the country. Women make up more than half of civilian victims. Children account for nearly four in ten.
These official numbers, harrowing as they are, only tell part of the story. Behind them lies a collapse of daily life. Over two million people have been displaced in Burkina Faso alone. Public servants have fled their posts. Schools have shuttered. Agricultural land lies untended. Public roads – once lifelines – are now deemed as corridors of death, lined with hidden devices and strewn with shattered vehicles. State presence has withdrawn from entire regions: the Sahel, Boucle du Mouhoun, the Cascades, the Centre-North, and the East are now arenas of abandonment.
The tactical evolution of these devices is fast and alarming. Once confined to pressure plates or basic wire triggers, they have been supercharged – in part by lessons learnt in Syria and, now, Ukraine. They now include double traps, human decoys, urban concealment, and increasingly, the dreaded and stalking aerial delivery systems. Drones have become platforms for dropping explosives onto military outposts and civilian gatherings. These are not makeshift tools of desperate insurgents. They are part of a developing ecosystem of terror, growing in complexity and lethality.
In neighbouring Togo, IEDs have become a direct challenge to the authority of the state. They disrupt the operations of security forces, reduce the government’s capacity to maintain public order, and demolish public infrastructure. Roads, administrative buildings, and even health posts have been damaged or destroyed. This physical erosion is matched by a psychological one: the public loses faith when the state cannot protect, cannot provide and cannot remain.
Local economies are increasingly strangled. Agricultural trade is being halted. Commerce is – in many parts – suspended. Families flee and Communities fracture. Trauma stalks the land – the untold number who have lost limbs, children, parents. In some villages, people walk in single file, following cattle paths, afraid to step off the track.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the situation is worsening. There has been a marked rise in IED attacks over the past year, including incidents involving booby-trapped everyday items: cooking pots, water containers, radios. Groups linked to terrorist networks have embedded themselves in local populations. Illegal gold mining has facilitated the trafficking of ammonium nitrate and other dual-use chemicals into the northern borderlands. This influx of materials fuels ever more sophisticated bomb-making. The threat has migrated from the Sahel’s interior to the coasts.
And in the face of all of this, security forces seem woefully under-equipped. In 2023 alone, extremist violence linked to IEDs reached record levels, with more than 200 recorded events in Côte d’Ivoire. Border patrol units lack training in counter-IED procedures. Crime scenes are poorly preserved. Intelligence is often local, fragmented, and unanalysed. In many cases, soldiers and police simply abandon areas considered too dangerous to patrol. Armed groups fill the vacuum. With each explosion, the state recedes further.
And while states try to respond – drafting national counter-IED strategies, training bomb squads, investing in electronic countermeasures – their efforts are underfunded and often too late. For every IED mine cleared, more are laid. For every road cleared, more are overtaken. The enemy adapts quickly; bureaucracy does not.
What this crisis reveals is not just a military threat – it is a political one. IEDs don’t merely explode. They undermine the very idea of statehood. They prevent post-conflict recovery. They derail disarmament programmes. They stall development. They erode trust. They create zones of lawlessness where governance cannot function, where extremism breeds, and where civilians are trapped between insurgents and indifference.
The scale of this crisis demands more than fragmented technical assistance or donor roundtables. It requires outrage. Urgency. And strategy.
Why are commercial components used in bomb-making still flowing across borders unregulated? Why are regional data-sharing platforms not the norm? Why are survivor assistance and psychosocial support still marginal in international arms control?
There are solutions. National strategies must be integrated into disarmament and peacebuilding efforts. Risk education must be scaled up and localised. Communities must be made part of the solution, not passive recipients of foreign-led interventions. Gender-sensitive approaches are essential – women face unique risks and hold untapped potential in community defence and early warning. Youth must be given roles in prevention. And the forensic documentation of every IED incident should be standard practice, not a luxury.
This is a war without uniformed armies or conventional rules. But it is a war nonetheless, and the people of West Africa are under siege. The international community must respond with the same moral urgency it claims in other global crises.
AOAV has long warned of the harm caused by explosive violence in populated areas. That harm now defines the reality for millions across the region. This is not merely a humanitarian concern. It is a call to action—for governments, donors, NGOs, and international bodies alike.
If we continue to treat the rise of IEDs as a marginal threat, we will watch the states of West Africa end, not with a single bang, but with a thousand hidden explosions.