Having likely endured the largest plurality of deaths from the spread of Islam—perhaps 120 million (at least) between the seventh and nineteenth centuries, primarily the result of the slave trade—today, the African continent is the epicenter of global jihad.
In its November–December 2025 issue, the CTC Sentinel, the official magazine of the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, documented this reality. Its article entitled “The Changing Character of Terrorism and U.S. Counterterrorism” demonstrated that:
- “While more countries (66) experienced at least one terrorist incident in 2024 than in any year since 2018, terrorist activity is also increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries: 86 percent of all terrorism-related deaths in 2024 occurred in just 10 countries. Seven of those countries are in Africa, five in the Sahel specifically.”
- “Where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Indeed, according to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, the Sahel accounted ‘for over half of all terrorism-related deaths in 2024.’”
- “The data shows that while countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Nigeria have been largely steady when it comes to significant impact by terrorism over recent years, Sahelian countries (Burkina Faso, chief among them) have experienced a steep increase. In 2023 and 2024, Burkina Faso was most impacted by terrorism globally.”
- “The picture in 2025 has been bleak, particularly for Africa and the threats from the Islamic State and al-Qa‘ida there. Findings from ACLED reveal that ‘over two-thirds of the Islamic State’s global activity in the first half of 2025 was recorded in Africa.’ Meanwhile, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, militant Islamist groups linked to al-Qa‘ida affiliate Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) today ‘account for 83 percent of all fatalities in the Sahel.’… These developments only underscore that the Sahelian challenge will continue into 2026.”
- “Today, al-Qa‘ida has affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and South Asia. In the Sahel and Horn of Africa alone, its branches—JNIM and al-Shabaab, respectively—are powerful, well-funded, and gaining ground.”
- “…[T]errorism deaths in the Sahel in 2024 were 10 times higher than in 2019. According to the Global Terrorism Index, the Islamic State and its affiliates were the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world in 2024, responsible for 1,805 killed in 22 countries.”
Similarly, a July 28, 2025, report from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies announced that approximately 150,000 Africans have died due to jihad since 2016. The same institution said in 2024 that 23,322 Africans had been killed by Muslim terrorists in 2023 alone.
