Why Ghana is safe from jihadists, for now

A mix of luck, competence and indifference has deterred Sahelian militants:

Bongo-Soe, explains the town’s chief, is “the end of Ghana”. No more than four kilometres of lawless scrub lies between his palace and the border with Burkina Faso (see map). Few places in the west African country are more exposed to attacks from jihadists running rampant in the Sahel to the north. Yet the last time Chief Naba Amaltinga sensed a serious threat was about three years ago, when he says the militants used his district as a base for raids across the border. As soon as he raised the alarm the army stormed the forests and forced the fighters to retreat. No jihadists have bothered the area since then.

It is not just Bongo-Soe. Jihadist rebels have in recent years swept through Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and are menacing their coastal neighbours. But Ghana remains unscathed. More than half of all terrorism-related deaths globally in 2024 were in the Sahel; not one was in Ghana. This makes it a vital bulwark against the jihadists’ march across west Africa. But it raises the question why the country has been spared, and how long that can last.

“We’ve been on high alert for quite a long time,” says Wisdom Lavoe, deputy police chief of Ghana’s Northern Region. Ghana shares a 600km-long border with Burkina Faso; the junta there controls barely half the country. A year ago a leader of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda and the most powerful in the Sahel, said it aimed to expand into Ghana, Togo and Benin. This year Benin experienced two of the deadliest attacks in its history, while Togo counted a record number of attacks in 2024. Even Ivory Coast, the region’s most prosperous economy, was attacked as recently as 2021.

One possible reason for Ghana’s stability is geographic luck of the draw. The borderlands straddling Togo, Benin and their Sahelian neighbours consist of vast, ungoverned forests that have become a hideout for militants and smugglers. Nowhere in Ghana is that inaccessible to the state.

Another is the relative professionalism of Ghana’s security forces. The army has recently built new bases in the north and stepped up border patrols. Local residents, by and large, trust the soldiers and are willing to help them. “Everybody’s eyes and ears are alert,” says another local chief. In all areas The Economist visited, interviewees told stories about locals discovering suspected militants and handing them over to the army or police.

Yet the most important reason Ghana has not been attacked is that JNIM has chosen not to, perhaps preferring it as a market and safe haven. “This is the place where the bad guys come to regroup, grab some resources, gain some respite—and go back,” says Castro Senyalah, a local journalist. Some are said to own houses in Ghana where their families live; profits from cattle theft, a big source of JNIM’s income, depend on Ghana’s livestock markets. A ten-kilometre stretch of road south of the border town of Paga had 25 fuel stations. Locals say motorbikes loaded with petrol cross into Burkina Faso every day.

Local leaders and the government largely let the fighters be as long as they do not cause trouble in Ghana. “We are very diplomatic…we will only attack them when they are violent,” says Chief Amaltinga.

The calm may not last forever. Eliasu Tanko, a local security expert, notes that there have recently been attacks on the Burkinabé side of the border near Bawku, a town notorious for its violent local conflicts and illegal arms trade. In September Ghana’s army said it had ramped up patrols in Bongo-Soe in response to reports of cross-border infiltration. The outlook is “unpredictable”, says Lieutenant Colonel Kakra Sasu-Antwi of the 11th Mechanised Division, which patrols the area.

Though Ghana is richer and better governed than its neighbours, conditions in the far north are similar to those across the border. Local conflicts of the sort jihadists are often skilled at exploiting are common. Your correspondent drove past the remains of a devastated and deserted village. “We don’t have serious internecine wars,” says Vladimir Antwi Danso, dean of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College. “But we are getting there.”

The Fulani, a minority ethnic group scattered across west Africa, are not killed by the army for allegedly supporting insurgents, as is common in Mali and Burkina Faso. But nor are they well integrated. “If there was an attack in Ghana, the Fulani would probably be singled out,” reckons James Courtright of the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think-tank. That could prove a boon to JNIM recruiters, who so far have failed to attract many Ghanaians.

Compared with neighbouring Ivory Coast, the government has invested less in infrastructure or job-creation programmes to discourage young men from joining militant groups. The north is home to legions of unemployed youngsters “who feel their lives to be useless”, worries Thomas Kwelese Bayeriwe, a local assembly member in Kayoro district.

Ideally, countries in the region would band together to tackle the crisis. But since 2020 military juntas have seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. In January the three countries quit the Economic Community of West African States, the main regional bloc.

John Mahama, Ghana’s new president, has tried to patch things up with them to make common cause against the jihadists. His security advisers say that Ghanaian soldiers co-operate closely with their counterparts in Burkina Faso, sharing intelligence and sometimes allowing them to cross the border to retrieve suspects. They would also like to establish a joint operations centre on Burkinabé soil.

Here, though, lurks a dilemma. Until now the jihadists have spared Ghana. A less hands-off approach to their presence could change that. Yet in the long term doing nothing may strengthen them. Adongo Veronica, a mother in Namoo, believes that “God is chasing the terrorists away.” Eventually Ghana’s government, however reluctantly, may need to do that job. 

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