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Terrorists groups in West Africa are using more drones in attacks, raising fears they are now able to fight a “war from the skies”.
A BBC report, which quoted the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), said two Islamic State (IS) affiliates carried out around 20 drone strikes, most of them in Nigeria.
In 2025, TheCable reported that Ahmed Jaha, a member of the house of representatives, said Boko Haram insurgents are using drones to attack residents in Borno state.
Jaha said the weapons used by the terrorists are more sophisticated than that of the Nigerian military.
The BBC report also quotes Acled as saying that an al-Qaeda affiliate has conducted at least 69 drone attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023.
Ladd Serwat, a senior Africa analyst at Acled, told the BBC that the “jihadists tend to use commercially available, relatively inexpensive quadcopter [unmanned] drones” that are “rigged with explosives”.
He added that they also deploy drones for reconnaissance and surveillance to prepare for ground attacks.
Serwat said that the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has carried out 10 drone strikes since 2024 in north-eastern Nigeria, as well as in northern Cameroon, southern Niger, and southern Chad — regions affected by insurgency.
A similar number of drone attacks have been carried out by another IS affiliate, the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), according to Acled data.
The latest attack occurred on January 29 in Borno state, when terrorists launched a two-pronged assault using multiple armed drones and ground fighters on a military base.
The Nigerian military reported that nine soldiers were killed in the attack carried out by ISWAP — described by Acled as the “most prolific” IS African affiliate in “drone warfare”.
