Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea affects a number of countries in West Africa as well as the wider international community. By 2011, it had become an issue of global concern. Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are often part of heavily armed criminal enterprises, who employ violent methods to steal oil cargo. In 2012, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), Oceans Beyond Piracy and the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Program reported that the number of vessels attacks by West African pirates had reached a world high, with 966 seafarers attacked during the year. According to the Control Risks Group, pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea had by mid-November 2013 maintained a steady level of around 100 attempted hijackings in the year, a close second behind the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea continues to be a concern to significantly affect the shipping industry, with over 80% of crew kidnappings occurring there, as reported by the IMB in late 2019. Officials report Nigerian pirate gangs in the Gulf of Guinea shifting, in 2019, from cargo theft to kidnapping seafaring crews in order to extort ransom from ship owners. With piracy surging again in the 2020s, governments in the region generally highlight that the fight against piracy requires a broad understanding of maritime security throughout the Gulf of Guinea.
Scope of the problem The Gulf of Guinea stretches from Senegal to Angola, covering over 6,000 km of coast line. It comprises 20 coastal states, islands and landlocked states and forms two regions: West Africa and Central Africa. The sea basin is of geo-political and geo-economic importance for the transport of goods to and from central and southern Africa. Additionally, it is a choke point for the African energy trade, with intensive oil extraction in Nigeria's Niger Delta.
The term 'piracy' is widely used in the media and in official reports to generally refer to maritime crime in the region, but this is formally incorrect, as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as an act conducted on the high seas i.e. beyond territorial waters. Similar criminal activities that take place within territorial waters are not defined as acts of piracy following this definition in international law.
Reports of attempted or actual attacks considered acts of piracy, differ wildly. This has added to a general confusion with regards to understanding the scope of the problem, fueled significantly by the varied use of the term piracy itself, the uncoordinated and heterogeneous sources of information drawn from to prepare reports and the different stakeholders' interests in portraying the problem one way or another.
Even though piracy in the region is not a new phenomenon, it has widely changed in the new century, with regards both to the typology and the number of attacks carried out. In the past, the vast majority of incidents could be categorized as simple maritime robbery: individual sailors, usually carrying cash, were often targeted for robbery on shore, and attacked when ships were at port or transferring cargo close to shore. However, since the early 2010s, attacks have started to differ from this profile: operations have become more sophisticated and organised. To facilitate successful operation, the pirates now draw on extensive piracy networks to gain access to security and economic resources. This includes government officials, businesspeople, armed groups, and transnational mafia. Incursions have been more serious and aimed at directly acquired cargos containing refined petroleum, as the region has increasingly been marred by illegal oil-bunkering. According to a European Parliament report, this was due to the discovery of large amounts of offshore hydrocarbon, from which only the central government, local elites, and oil companies have actually profited. Consequently, some of those excluded from welfare have turned to such illegal maritime activity, in the form of 'petro-piracy'.
By 2010, 45 and by 2011 64 incidents were reported to the UN International Maritime Organization. However, many events go unreported. Piracy acts interfere with the legitimate trading interests of the affected countries that include Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As an example, trade of Benin's major port, the Port of Cotonou, was reported in 2012 to have dropped by 70 percent. The cost of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea due to stolen goods, security, and insurance has been estimated to be about $2 billion. Navies and law enforcement agencies trying to tackle problems with piracy in the Gulf of Guinea have to conduct a thorough analysis of different types of attacks.
As of 2014, pirate attacks in West Africa mainly occur in territorial waters, terminals and harbours rather than in the high seas. This incident pattern has hindered intervention by international naval forces. Pirates in the region operate a well-funded criminal industry, which includes established supply networks. They are often part of heavily armed and sophisticated criminal enterprises, who increasingly use motherships to launch their attacks. The local pirates' overall aim is to steal oil cargo. As such, they do not attach much importance to holding vessels for ransom. Additionally, pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are especially noted for their violent modus operandi, which frequently involves the kidnapping, torture and shooting of crewmen. The increasingly violent methods used by these groups is believed to be part of a conscious "business model" adopted by them, in which violence and intimidation plays a major role.
According to the 2018 Oceans Beyond Piracy report, covering the year 2017, the number of seafarers affected by piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea has decreased slightly compared to 2016. In total 1,726 seafarers were affected by piracy and armed robbery in 2017 in West African waters, compared to the 1,921 the year before. While 880 failed attacks or boarding occurred, 21 episodes of kidnapping took place and 100 seafarers were taken hostages. In total, there were 97 piracy and robbery incidents involving weapons, 13 of those with guns and 2 with heavy machine guns. The total estimated cost in the area due to stolen goods, contracted maritime security, insurance has been $818.1 million.
The International Maritime Bureau said, in October 2019, that the Gulf of Guinea accounted for over 80% of crew kidnappings by pirates, then, later, that 130 seafarers were kidnapped in 22 separate incidents in 2020, surpassing the 2019 record of 121 kidnappings.
Despite a decline in reported piracy incidents since the early 2020s, the Gulf of Guinea remained affected by maritime insecurity. Maritime security organizations continue to report kidnappings for ransom and armed robbery incidents in the region. Incidents of kidnapping for ransom continued to be reported in 2025 and 2026. In May 2025, armed pirates boarded a cargo ship travelling between Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, abducting a crew member while the remaining crew sheltered in the vessel's citadel.
A vessel hijacking that occurred between Nigeria and São Tomé and Príncipe was one of 12 piracy-related incidents reported in the Gulf of Guinea during the first half of the year. Maritime security analysts reported an increase in kidnappings for ransom at sea during the same period. According to maritime security researcher Tayo Akinpelumi, anti-piracy measures in the Bight of Biafra contributed to changes in pirate tactics, with groups increasingly targeting government officials and other high-value individuals. Akinpelumi stated that such attacks were typically carried out at night by groups of approximately ten armed pirates using fast boats and were often completed within minutes. He also estimated that pirates collected approximately US$400,000 in ransom payments in Nigeria between July 2022 and June 2023. In December 2025, the Portuguese-flagged LPG carrier CGAS Saturn was boarded by pirates while sailing toward Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. The attack occurred about 93 km (50 nautical miles) offshore and resulted in the kidnapping of nine crew members and the injury of another. On January 10 2026, armed attackers abducted nine crew members from the fishing vessel IB Fish 7 in Gabonese waters. In February 2026, gunmen attacked and robbed fishing boats off the coast of Ghana.
Root causes of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea A combination of root causes can be attributed to the pervasive presence of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, most of which display considerable overlap. Overall, research seems to indicate that when speaking of piracy, it is important not to focus on one single solution, and instead approach the battle from a multi-layered perspective, solving multiple issues with a combination of national, regional, and international efforts. The following section breaks down some of the identified root causes for the pervasiveness of piracy in the region.
Corruption Findings from Nigeria have indicated corruption as a major cause of piracy, typically attributed to the weak legal and jurisdictional systems, law enforcement and the security apparatus of the nation. This lack of development is attributed to and identified in many of the Gulf of Guinea states.
Corruption represents a threat to democracy when powerful individuals or organizations, particularly those linked to the military and security sectors, utilize their positions to serve their own interests at the expense of the integrity of other persons, authorities, and institutions in charge of protecting the properties and assets within the nation. These pervasive practices also manifest in matters of the sea, as evidenced from the Nigerian navy, who have routinely engaged in oil bunkering, while public officials have also reportedly benefited from piracy in a multitude of ways, including engaging in corrupt practices that arise opportunistically when producing and exporting oil in the Niger Delta, resulting in the disappearance billions of dollars into overseas bank accounts of corrupt public officials and politicians. The challenges in studying the association between corruption and piracy have been in finding the clear connections between corrupt officials and pirates, and in revealing whether piracy works primarily as ad hoc, short-term relationships between pirates, powerful organizations and corrupt public officials, or if it is deeply entrenched in the wider governmental structures.
Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing A state's incapability to maintain control over its own territorial waters can lead to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which marginalises local fishermen who may in turn resort to criminal activity, including piracy (see also youth unemployment below).
According to the Food and Agriculture and Agriculture Organization, Illegal fishing is which is that conducted 'by national or foreign vessels in waters under the jurisdiction of a state, without the permission of that state, or in contravention of its laws and regulations', and it also includes vessels fishing in breach of other national and international laws or obligations, including in the high seas.