Organised Crime, Terror and Insecurity in Africa (OCTA)

Investigating the interface between organised crime and terrorism in Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria, focusing on local experiences.




REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo, Thomas Mukoya | Policemen secure the scene of a bus explosion along the Thika super-highway in Kenya's capital Nairobi


The crime-terror nexus has become an increasingly popular term amid warnings that the ‘evil twins’ of criminality and terrorism can erode political, economic and social stability, undermine security and hinder development processes. Yet the majority of research in this area is dominated by donors and national governments and focuses on top-down understandings of the relationship between these two threats. It also focuses narrowly on legally defined organised crime and terrorist groups, while underplaying state actors’ involvement in generating insecurity through corruption, criminality and violence. Such an approach means that the reality on the ground may be overlooked, to the detriment of effective responses.

Our three-year project (2022–2025) explores the interface between organised crime and terrorism in Kenya, Nigeria and Mozambique from the bottom up. It prioritises local experiences and understandings of crime, terrorism and any convergence of the two, adopting a broad approach to examine state and non-state actors’ roles in either providing security or generating insecurity.

REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo, Thomas Mukoya | Policemen secure the scene of a bus explosion along the Thika super-highway in Kenya's capital Nairobi

Project team


Dr Liam O’Shea

Former RUSI Senior Research Fellow

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Genevieve Kotarska

Associate Fellow | SHOC Network Member - Researcher

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Mark Williams

Programme Manager | SHOC Network Member - Researcher

Organised Crime and Policing

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Michael Jones

Research Fellow

Terrorism and Conflict

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Christopher Hockey

Senior Research Fellow

RUSI Nairobi

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Dr Jessica White

Acting Director of Terrorism and Conflict Studies

Terrorism and Conflict

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Dr Joana de Deus Pereira

Senior Research Fellow

RUSI Europe

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Stephen Reimer

Associate Fellow

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Tom Keatinge

Director, CFS

Centre for Finance and Security

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External organisations


Conciliation Resources, Nigeria

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Centro Para Democracia e Desenvolvimento, Mozambique

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Aims and objectives

This project addresses gaps in our knowledge and understanding of organised crime, terrorism and any overlap between the two by building on the existing knowledge base, while putting local involvement, inputs and lived experience at the forefront of our research. The project works with in-country partners and stakeholders from a variety of sectors to generate new evidence and gain a fuller understanding of organised crime, terrorism and their potential convergence.

The project aims to provide evidence-based and context-specific policy recommendations to address organised crime, terrorism and any crime-terror nexus, with a focus on building local resilience through practical efforts. In doing so, the project seeks to explore what contextual factors have caused previous security policy recommendations to fail in developing countries, and how future ones might succeed.

Targeted recommendations will be shared with key stakeholders through formal dialogues and local engagement, to improve how governments, donors and cross-sector partners conceive of and respond to the crime-terror nexus.

Project sponsor

  • Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

    Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

    This project is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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Latest publications

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