The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has raised fresh alarm over the growing alliance between terrorist groups and international drug cartels operating across Africa, warning that narcotics trafficking is now helping to finance insurgency and violent extremism across the continent.

Speaking before the US House Armed Services Committee, AFRICOM Commander Gen. Dagvin Anderson said terror organisations operating in West Africa and the Sahel are increasingly relying on cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking to fund weapons purchases, recruitment drives and attacks.

According to Anderson, cocaine shipments moving through Africa towards Europe have surged dramatically since 2024, with criminal syndicates from Latin America now partnering with African-based extremist networks and setting up industrial-scale drug operations on the continent.

He warned that groups linked to ISIS and other extremist movements are exploiting weak border controls, ungoverned territories and political instability to expand their financial networks through organised crime.

The warning came as Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) announced one of the biggest anti-drug breakthroughs in the country’s history — the dismantling of a Nigerian-Mexican methamphetamine syndicate operating from a hidden forest laboratory in Ogun State.

NDLEA Chairman, Brigadier General Buba Marwa (Rtd.), revealed that operatives arrested 10 suspects, including three Mexican chemists allegedly brought into Nigeria to supervise meth production for the cartel.

Security operatives reportedly uncovered massive quantities of methamphetamine, precursor chemicals and industrial solvents valued at more than N480 billion during coordinated raids carried out across Ogun and Lagos states.

The operation exposed what authorities described as an emerging pattern where foreign cartels are increasingly collaborating with local criminal networks to establish large-scale synthetic drug laboratories inside remote Nigerian communities.

Marwa said the syndicate operated from a concealed laboratory inside Abidagba forest in Ogun State while also maintaining luxury safe houses in Lagos used for logistics, coordination and protection of cartel activities.

Authorities recovered over 2,400 kilograms of methamphetamine and chemical substances capable of producing millions of street doses, alongside luxury vehicles, passports and communication devices allegedly linked to the cartel leaders.

AFRICOM also accused foreign criminal groups, including Mexican cartels, of expanding their influence across Africa by exporting drug-production expertise and turning the continent into both a manufacturing hub and transit corridor for narcotics destined for Europe and other global markets.

The US military further warned that rising unemployment, political instability and weak institutions across parts of Africa are creating fertile ground for both extremist recruitment and organised crime expansion.

The revelations come amid growing military cooperation between Nigeria and the United States, particularly in joint counterterrorism operations targeting ISIS-linked groups operating in Nigeria’s northeast and parts of the Sahel region.