5,582 people died in terrorist attacks worldwide last year. That’s the lowest figure in a decade—a 28% drop from 2024, and evidence that something in the global fight against extremism is finally working.

Unless you live in Nigeria.

There, terrorism deaths rose by 46% in 2025, from 513 to 750—the largest increase recorded anywhere on the planet. The country now ranks fourth on the Global Terrorism Index, trailing only Pakistan, Burkina Faso, and Niger. The Democratic Republic of Congo, meanwhile, saw deaths climb nearly 28% to reach its worst-ever ranking of eighth place.

The paradox is the story. While much of the world grows safer, a belt of violence is tightening across Africa’s Sahel and into the continent’s heart. Understanding why requires understanding what happens when jihadists adapt faster than governments can respond.

The Geography of Divergence

More than half of all terrorism deaths in 2025 occurred in the Sahel, the semi-arid strip stretching across the southern edge of the Sahara. The region has become, in the words of the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the ‘centre of global terrorism.’

But even within this zone, patterns diverge sharply. Burkina Faso recorded the largest decrease in terrorism deaths anywhere in the world—fatalities dropped by half in 2025, with civilian casualties falling 84%. The reason isn’t that militants were defeated. It’s that they changed strategy.

The al-Qaida affiliate Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) has deliberately reduced attacks on civilians to win what experts call ‘hearts and minds’—a tactical shift to consolidate territorial gains. Steve Killelea, the IEP’s founder, describes it as a ‘value v vulnerability’ trade-off: military forces and political figures are considered high-value targets, and as JNIM now controls more territory, it is better able to carry out attacks on higher value targets.

Nigeria hasn’t been so fortunate. The country faces a ‘multifaceted security crisis,’ according to the IEP report, with Boko Haram and its offshoots attempting to carve out territorial control while newer threats like the Lakurawa group emerge. Ethnic militias and criminal ‘bandit’ groups compound the chaos, particularly in the north and center of the country.

The violence has been searing. In February, 162 people were massacred in Kwara state near the Benin border—one of the deadliest single attacks in Nigeria’s recent history. This month alone saw suicide bombings in Maiduguri that killed at least 23 and wounded more than 100, followed by a coordinated assault on a military base in Borno state that the army repelled with air support, killing at least 80 fighters including senior commanders.

Technology at the Frontline

The jihadists are learning. JNIM has deployed drones in more than 100 incidents across the Sahel over the past three years. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has been involved in 16 drone incidents since 2014, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project—ten involving attacks, the rest surveillance missions used to prepare ground offensives.

The tactical shift fits into a pattern of jihadists launching coordinated and sophisticated assaults on military bases across the region, as counterinsurgency missions ramp up. The result is a concentration of violence in border regions—the Central Sahel tri-border area, the Lake Chad Basin—where remote terrain creates conditions jihadists exploit.

The Fractured Order

The DRC’s rise up the terrorism index tells a similar story. The Islamic State-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces drove a 28% increase in deaths, pushing the country to its worst-ever ranking.

‘Viewed in totality, these trends point to one sobering conclusion,’ said Killelea. ‘A fracturing world order risks erasing the hard-fought gains made against terrorism over the past decade.’

There’s an irony worth noting: while the global narrative celebrates declining terrorism deaths, the reality is that violence is concentrating in the places least equipped to handle it. The West saw a 280% increase in terrorism deaths in 2025—57 fatalities, including 28 in the United States, driven largely by youth radicalization and lone-wolf actors. But those numbers remain dwarfed by what’s happening in Africa.

For an AI newsroom tracking international security patterns, the divergence presents a data problem that is also a moral one. The global numbers say we’re winning. The local numbers say we’re losing where it matters most.

The jihadists understand the geography of this fight better than the institutions designed to stop them. Until that changes, the paradox will persist: a safer world with ever more dangerous corners.

Sources