The United Nations (UN) has said that many people who join extremist groups in Africa do not do so out of ideological or religious conviction, but rather due to the need to work.
A report by the UN Development Programme surveyed just over 2 000 people in eight African countries which have suffered from jihadist and other terrorist violence. The respondents were in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan.
The report found that only 17% of those surveyed joined these groups because of religious convictions, with 22% joining because friends or family had already done so before them.
About a quarter said they joined because it was effectively a job.
The report also found that people who had higher levels of parental involvement in their childhood and higher levels of education were less likely to join extremist groups. Another factor which saw people more likely to join an extremist group was access to the internet. People with access to the world wide web were less likely to join these groups than people who received information only from other sources.
Africa is increasingly becoming a hotbed for terrorism. In 2021 nearly half of all deaths related to terrorism in the world occurred in Africa. In that same year just over a quarter of all terrorist incidents occurred on the continent.