In our second blog piece on Nigeria’s conflict environment and the U.S. increasing security position to address it, we look more deeply at banditry in Nigeria, which is no longer just crime. This piece attempts to understand how banditry is evolving into the logistical infrastructure that could enable the next phase of jihadist expansion across West Africa.

The Christmas-Day airstrikes in Nigeria mark a significant military escalation in West Africa against a target that we’re still trying to understand.

Guinea is home to a tremendous amount of raw critical minerals. But the operating environment has historically made companies shy away. Things are changing quickly though, and understanding this space is critical to doing business.

With development and humanitarian aid shrinking, everyone in West Africa - beneficiaries of aid, governments and commercial actors - will feel the impacts on security and sustainability.

Emerging and Frontier markets do not operate in a vacuum - their survival, capacity to thrive, and more importantly their connectivity to global markets is deeply connected to smaller market activity. Dismissing the security, politics and economics of these far flung markets and traders can have downstream effects on broader market activity.