New report places SA in top three for criminality on continent

The report, which ENACT released on Friday, showed that between 2019 and 2023, overall criminality on the continent rose from 4.97 to 5.25, increasing by 0.20 points between 2019 and 2021 and by 0.08 points since 2021.

 While the southern Africa region had the lowest criminality score, South Africa was among the top three countries with the highest criminality scores on the continent, at 7.18 points after Nigeria (7.28) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (7.35).

Analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime Rubi Matamba said criminality in West Africa is driven by political instability, armed conflict, and heightened instability.

"There has been a shift away from the US as the destination market of choice towards supplying domestic cocaine markets in Europe.

“This has been enabled by maritime and air supply chains that move commodities efficiently to European ports and cities and a resurgence of traffic through indirect transit supply routes in African countries along the Atlantic coastline.

“These countries are vulnerable to exploitation and well-located for transit from other regions," she said.

Matamba said the heroin trade showed a different trajectory to the other drug markets, shrinking by 0.13 between 2019 and 2021.

"Heroin from Southern Asia is trafficked through all of Africa’s regions, often using East Africa as an entry point, and then distributed to other markets in Africa and consumer markets in Western and Central Europe.

“Several East African countries serve as key transit points in the global heroin trade, including Kenya (7.50) and Tanzania (8.0). Tanzania, in particular, plays a central role in this illicit market by serving as a major landing point for heroin from Southern Asia, which is then distributed across the continent."

Matamba said criminality across Africa has risen. 

"Criminal markets, for which there are three rounds of data over the five years, like human trafficking and arms trafficking, have all experienced growth across the continent."

SEE FULL REPORT BELOW: