Boko Haram’s cattle rustling strategy

Stolen cattle are sold to fund the purchase of weapons and supplies and to recruit fighters. Rustling has grown in both scale and violence. And when perpetrated across national boundaries by actors such as Boko Haram, it demonstrates the terror-crime nexusespecially in the Lake Chad Basin. A recent assessment carried out by ENACT and the Central African Police Chiefs Committee (CAPCCO) identified cattle rustling as a priority crime affecting the Lake Chad region.

This is supported by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project information, which shows that incidents of cattle rustling by Boko Haram in Cameroon and Chad’s border regions rose from two in 2015 to 131 as of August 2024. There have been 390 incidents and 146 deaths in this time. This data relies on local groups and media reports, and many incidents may have gone unrecorded.