Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea: Progress and Future Challenges
The MOC
By
Kempton Baldridge
August 7, 2025
On May 31, 2022, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 2634, expressing “deep concern about the grave and persistent threat that piracy, armed robbery and transnational organized crime at sea in the Gulf of Guinea pose to international navigation, security, and sustainable development of States in the region”. A year earlier, the International Maritime Organization expressed its growing concern over the rising threat of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and subsequently convened a piracy working group during a session of the Maritime Safety Committee. Nearly half of all reported piracy incidents occurred in the Gulf of Guinea leading up to 2020, and the region is currently on track to record over 190 incidences of (reported) piracy for the first half of this decade.
Although the number of piracy incidents has declined since 2020, it is worth assessing what the long-term economic impact of piracy has been for the region, what efforts have been made to combat piracy, and what obstacles impede these efforts. Ultimately, the most consequential actions at combating piracy in the Gulf of Guinea have been national efforts that coincide within regional framework and guidelines.
Year
Number of reported Pirate attacks in Gulf of Guinea (Taken from the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre)
Cumulative Average
2010
39
39.0
2011
53
46.0
2012
62
51.3
2013
51
51.3
2014
41
49.2
2015
31
46.2
2016
54
47.3
2017
36
45.9
2018
82
49.9
2019
64
51.3
2020
84
54.3
2021
35
52.7
2022
19
50.1
2023
22
48.1
2024
18
46.1
Typical daily trade in the Gulf of Guinea involves 1,500 vessels traveling through the region’s waters or in and out of nearly twenty commercial seaports. It affects seventeen countries in West Africa, from Senegal and The Gambia in the north to Angola in the south. The 2010s saw respectable economic growth for the region, averaging 4 percent GDP growth annually. Twenty-five percent of African maritime traffic and thirty percent of American oil imports pass through the region. In addition to more developed states like Nigeria and Angola, countries such as Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Côte D’Ivoire have begun to emerge as new locales for international business.
However, this increased economic activity was accompanied by an overall increase in piracy from over the last fifteen years. In 2010, there were fewer than forty reported piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea; by 2020 that number had more than doubled to eighty-four. So far in 2025, there have been only eleven reported piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea; however, the long-term trend in the last fifteen years has, in fact, shown a slight increase, revealing that piracy remains a persistent threat in the area.
With a strengthening economy also comes societal inequalities. Despite the ample crude oil and mineral reserves in the area, extreme poverty is common throughout the region, with 242 million people living on $1.90 per day. One of the reasons behind this extreme poverty is the expansion of industrial fishing which can leave many local fishermen unemployed and more apt to turn to desperate measures to make ends meet, including piracy. Another contributory factor to poverty is institutional corruption, either through complicity between local state officials and pirates, or the misappropriation of development funds.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has a direct cost to companies and nations, and some foreign investors are becoming discouraged to do business in the region. Stable Seas, a maritime security group, released a report in December 2021 that conservatively estimated the direct and indirect cost of piracy to Gulf of Guinea nations at nearly $2 billion.
Fortunately, international and regional authorities have made concerted efforts at curbing piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. At the international level, France, Italy, Denmark have increased the number of exercises and patrols in the last few years in the area. In November 2024, France hosted Grand African Nemo, a maritime security exercise that it has held since 2018, and one of three to four exercises France intends to hold each year in the area. Representatives from nearly thirty nations attended the exercise, and fifty-five vessels and twelve aircraft participated. In May 2025, the U.S. Navy lead the 14th Obangame Express in the Gulf of Guinea. With thirty countries in attendance, including twenty-two African nations, it was the largest multinational maritime security exercise held in the region.
Besides multinational exercises and patrols, in 2013 regional states also established the Yaoundé Code of Conduct (YCoC): the first coordinated anti-piracy policy in the Gulf of Guinea. Signed by twenty-five countries—including the landlocked Rwanda, Central African Republic, and Mali—the agreement instituted a maritime safety and security framework to better aid collaboration and assistance between regional navies and security forces. The main drive of the agreement utilizes existing institutions, including the five zonal Multinational Maritime Coordination Centers and the National Maritime Operations Centers. Despite having framework in place, seven years after the YCoC was signed, the Gulf of Guinea had its highest number of piracy incidents seven years, suggesting that solely relying on better information sharing and regional maritime cooperation is insufficient to combat piracy in the area; individual states should determine their own national framework or policy initiative that fits within the YCoC’s goals and structure.
In addition to signing the YCoC, Nigeria (the regional power of the Gulf of Guinea) has adopted a focused anti-piracy maritime strategy through the creation of a Special Boat Service within its Navy. In 2019, the Nigerian government also passed the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offences Act (POMO Act), a legal framework that better enabled acts of piracy to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
However the new anti-piracy laws operate independently of domestic criminal and maritime law, creating a problem of coordination and jurisdictional responsibility. Further, the laws do not offer solutions to the ongoing problems of corruption within Nigeria’s maritime agencies, which are a source for piracy. Another shortcoming of the POMO Act is its lack of addressing the connection between piracy and shore-based organized crime. A step in the right direction might be for Nigeria to look at Kenya’s anti-piracy law passed in 2009, which included clauses that dealt with money laundering and organized crime.
Several anti-piracy laws passed in the 2020s addressed the shortcomings of the POMO Act. In May 2022, Nigeria passed the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, increasing the punishment towards acts of piracy and terrorism, including life sentences and higher fines for parties found guilty in funding piracy. In July 2022, the Nigerian government launched a collaborative strategy with an alliance of global shipping companies to combat piracy. The strategy divides security initiatives and assessments into area into those that pertain and can be handled by Nigerian Industry Working Group (made up of representatives from the Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency or NIMASA), and those which require regional and international partners. International partners include oil carriers like BIMCO or Intertanko and international agencies like the International Chamber of Shipping. This has enabled ongoing coordination and communication between public and private security initiatives. This helpful against piracy but comes with a host of regulatory and oversight issues as well.
The largest and most influential contribution Nigeria has made towards combating piracy is their Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure, or Deep Blue Project. Started in August 2019 and officially implemented in June 2021, the Deep Blue Project has cost nearly $200 million since its inception. In addition to facilitating better communication between the Nigerian Defense and Transportation ministries and the private shipping industry, the Deep Blue Project provides better training for NIMASA in the areas of intelligence gathering and sharing, maritime security, and special mission vehicle operation. The project has commissioned 600 specially-trained troops as well as several quick response security vessels and aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and armored vehicles, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the multi-domain approach needed to effectively combat piracy. Since the implementation of the Deep Blue Project, Nigerian territorial waters have become safer. Of the fifty-nine piracy incidents reported between 2022 and 2024, only three occurred in Nigerian waters or ports. At the start of its fifth year of implementation, the Deep Blue Project has been a model of not just effective anti-piracy policy, but also the beginning of a national maritime investment strategy.
While other countries have yet to implement a project similar in scale to Deep Blue, many have made modest increases to their offshore forces recently. Angola received one of three corvettes from France in 2022, and signed a contract with United Arab Emirates for three corvettes in 2023. The Ghanaian Navy acquired four new Flex Fighter-type patrol vessels in 2022, with two additional SAFE Boats International Defenders-type patrol boats delivered in 2023. Senegal received three offshore patrol vessels (OPV) from France in 2023 and 2024 and Cote D’Ivoire also received an OPV from Israel in 2023. These increases in naval forces are a step in the right direction, however regional navies must accompany this with a proportional program such as Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project.
2022 and 2024 saw two of the lowest instances of reported piracy in the Gulf of Guinea in nearly 30 years, however there is some debate as to the reason behind the decline between the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and NIMASA. IMB believes that foreign navies increasing patrols of the area is behind the decline, while NIMASA cites its successful implementation of the Deep Blue Project. Furthermore, despite the reporting of fewer pirate attacks and boardings in 2022, the IMB urged caution at celebrating presumptuously, as the pirate groups were still reported in the region and may have pulled back their attacks to better find ways around the increased security presence.
There will continue to be challenges. Initiatives such as Deep Blue are still in their infancy. For it to remain effective, it must continue to be adequately funded and supported, especially as new and improved surveillance technology comes online. Government corruption and fair policy implementation also pose challenges for sustaining anti-piracy efforts. The underlying poverty in the Gulf of Guinea must also be addressed, along with improved community engagement that includes coastal fisherman into national security planning.
In their report of the region, Dryad Global, a maritime risk management firm said “Without a tangible improvement in onshore conditions that create legitimate and sustainable alternatives to piracy it is extremely difficult to see that there has been or will be any substantive deterrence against individuals’ intent to participate in piracy.” If anti-piracy efforts are to succeed in the long-run, economic insecurity must be addressed for the coastal communities of the region. As the graph below illustrates, there is a slight relationship, between the unemployment rate of Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high-income countries) and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
Despite these challenges, there is reason to be optimistic about the future. Based on the eleven reported piracy incidents of piracy so far in 2025, by the year’s end, there may not be much more than twenty attacks in the Gulf of Guinea; this is still significantly lower than the average of nearly forty-six attacks annually between 2011 and 2020. Maritime piracy is trending downwards for the region, and international and regional actors and stakeholders have demonstrated an earnest interest in addressing the issue. The involvement of nations with more developed blue water navies can help train Gulf of Guinea nations as they develop more robust communications and intelligence networks under the framework laid out in the Yaoundé Code of Conduct. Additionally, Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project provides an example how individual nations can build upon the Yaoundé Code of Conduct and share information better, coordinate action, strengthen laws and invest in equipment, manpower and training with the explicit purpose of securing maritime borders for private and public investment.
For further information on piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and the rest of the world, the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre offers Live Piracy Maps and Reports, as well as Advice and Warnings to Masters (https://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php/piracy-reporting-centre).
Kempton Baldridge currently sails as a Chief Mate with AET Offshore in Galveston, TX. He holds a 1600 Master license and 2nd Mate Unlimited Tonnage, as well as a BA in History from Johns Hopkins University and BS in Maritime Technology from Great Lakes Maritime Academy. When he is not sailing, he lives in Towson, MD and works as the Maritime Coordinator for the Community College of Baltimore County.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Kempton Baldridge
On May 31, 2022, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 2634, expressing “deep concern about the grave and persistent threat that piracy, armed robbery and transnational organized crime at sea in the Gulf of Guinea pose to international navigation, security, and sustainable development of States in the region”. A year earlier, the International Maritime Organization expressed its growing concern over the rising threat of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and subsequently convened a piracy working group during a session of the Maritime Safety Committee. Nearly half of all reported piracy incidents occurred in the Gulf of Guinea leading up to 2020, and the region is currently on track to record over 190 incidences of (reported) piracy for the first half of this decade.
Although the number of piracy incidents has declined since 2020, it is worth assessing what the long-term economic impact of piracy has been for the region, what efforts have been made to combat piracy, and what obstacles impede these efforts. Ultimately, the most consequential actions at combating piracy in the Gulf of Guinea have been national efforts that coincide within regional framework and guidelines.
Typical daily trade in the Gulf of Guinea involves 1,500 vessels traveling through the region’s waters or in and out of nearly twenty commercial seaports. It affects seventeen countries in West Africa, from Senegal and The Gambia in the north to Angola in the south. The 2010s saw respectable economic growth for the region, averaging 4 percent GDP growth annually. Twenty-five percent of African maritime traffic and thirty percent of American oil imports pass through the region. In addition to more developed states like Nigeria and Angola, countries such as Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Côte D’Ivoire have begun to emerge as new locales for international business.
However, this increased economic activity was accompanied by an overall increase in piracy from over the last fifteen years. In 2010, there were fewer than forty reported piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea; by 2020 that number had more than doubled to eighty-four. So far in 2025, there have been only eleven reported piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea; however, the long-term trend in the last fifteen years has, in fact, shown a slight increase, revealing that piracy remains a persistent threat in the area.
With a strengthening economy also comes societal inequalities. Despite the ample crude oil and mineral reserves in the area, extreme poverty is common throughout the region, with 242 million people living on $1.90 per day. One of the reasons behind this extreme poverty is the expansion of industrial fishing which can leave many local fishermen unemployed and more apt to turn to desperate measures to make ends meet, including piracy. Another contributory factor to poverty is institutional corruption, either through complicity between local state officials and pirates, or the misappropriation of development funds.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has a direct cost to companies and nations, and some foreign investors are becoming discouraged to do business in the region. Stable Seas, a maritime security group, released a report in December 2021 that conservatively estimated the direct and indirect cost of piracy to Gulf of Guinea nations at nearly $2 billion.
Fortunately, international and regional authorities have made concerted efforts at curbing piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. At the international level, France, Italy, Denmark have increased the number of exercises and patrols in the last few years in the area. In November 2024, France hosted Grand African Nemo, a maritime security exercise that it has held since 2018, and one of three to four exercises France intends to hold each year in the area. Representatives from nearly thirty nations attended the exercise, and fifty-five vessels and twelve aircraft participated. In May 2025, the U.S. Navy lead the 14th Obangame Express in the Gulf of Guinea. With thirty countries in attendance, including twenty-two African nations, it was the largest multinational maritime security exercise held in the region.
Besides multinational exercises and patrols, in 2013 regional states also established the Yaoundé Code of Conduct (YCoC): the first coordinated anti-piracy policy in the Gulf of Guinea. Signed by twenty-five countries—including the landlocked Rwanda, Central African Republic, and Mali—the agreement instituted a maritime safety and security framework to better aid collaboration and assistance between regional navies and security forces. The main drive of the agreement utilizes existing institutions, including the five zonal Multinational Maritime Coordination Centers and the National Maritime Operations Centers. Despite having framework in place, seven years after the YCoC was signed, the Gulf of Guinea had its highest number of piracy incidents seven years, suggesting that solely relying on better information sharing and regional maritime cooperation is insufficient to combat piracy in the area; individual states should determine their own national framework or policy initiative that fits within the YCoC’s goals and structure.
In addition to signing the YCoC, Nigeria (the regional power of the Gulf of Guinea) has adopted a focused anti-piracy maritime strategy through the creation of a Special Boat Service within its Navy. In 2019, the Nigerian government also passed the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offences Act (POMO Act), a legal framework that better enabled acts of piracy to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
However the new anti-piracy laws operate independently of domestic criminal and maritime law, creating a problem of coordination and jurisdictional responsibility. Further, the laws do not offer solutions to the ongoing problems of corruption within Nigeria’s maritime agencies, which are a source for piracy. Another shortcoming of the POMO Act is its lack of addressing the connection between piracy and shore-based organized crime. A step in the right direction might be for Nigeria to look at Kenya’s anti-piracy law passed in 2009, which included clauses that dealt with money laundering and organized crime.
Several anti-piracy laws passed in the 2020s addressed the shortcomings of the POMO Act. In May 2022, Nigeria passed the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, increasing the punishment towards acts of piracy and terrorism, including life sentences and higher fines for parties found guilty in funding piracy. In July 2022, the Nigerian government launched a collaborative strategy with an alliance of global shipping companies to combat piracy. The strategy divides security initiatives and assessments into area into those that pertain and can be handled by Nigerian Industry Working Group (made up of representatives from the Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency or NIMASA), and those which require regional and international partners. International partners include oil carriers like BIMCO or Intertanko and international agencies like the International Chamber of Shipping. This has enabled ongoing coordination and communication between public and private security initiatives. This helpful against piracy but comes with a host of regulatory and oversight issues as well.
The largest and most influential contribution Nigeria has made towards combating piracy is their Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure, or Deep Blue Project. Started in August 2019 and officially implemented in June 2021, the Deep Blue Project has cost nearly $200 million since its inception. In addition to facilitating better communication between the Nigerian Defense and Transportation ministries and the private shipping industry, the Deep Blue Project provides better training for NIMASA in the areas of intelligence gathering and sharing, maritime security, and special mission vehicle operation. The project has commissioned 600 specially-trained troops as well as several quick response security vessels and aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and armored vehicles, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the multi-domain approach needed to effectively combat piracy. Since the implementation of the Deep Blue Project, Nigerian territorial waters have become safer. Of the fifty-nine piracy incidents reported between 2022 and 2024, only three occurred in Nigerian waters or ports. At the start of its fifth year of implementation, the Deep Blue Project has been a model of not just effective anti-piracy policy, but also the beginning of a national maritime investment strategy.
While other countries have yet to implement a project similar in scale to Deep Blue, many have made modest increases to their offshore forces recently. Angola received one of three corvettes from France in 2022, and signed a contract with United Arab Emirates for three corvettes in 2023. The Ghanaian Navy acquired four new Flex Fighter-type patrol vessels in 2022, with two additional SAFE Boats International Defenders-type patrol boats delivered in 2023. Senegal received three offshore patrol vessels (OPV) from France in 2023 and 2024 and Cote D’Ivoire also received an OPV from Israel in 2023. These increases in naval forces are a step in the right direction, however regional navies must accompany this with a proportional program such as Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project.
2022 and 2024 saw two of the lowest instances of reported piracy in the Gulf of Guinea in nearly 30 years, however there is some debate as to the reason behind the decline between the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and NIMASA. IMB believes that foreign navies increasing patrols of the area is behind the decline, while NIMASA cites its successful implementation of the Deep Blue Project. Furthermore, despite the reporting of fewer pirate attacks and boardings in 2022, the IMB urged caution at celebrating presumptuously, as the pirate groups were still reported in the region and may have pulled back their attacks to better find ways around the increased security presence.
There will continue to be challenges. Initiatives such as Deep Blue are still in their infancy. For it to remain effective, it must continue to be adequately funded and supported, especially as new and improved surveillance technology comes online. Government corruption and fair policy implementation also pose challenges for sustaining anti-piracy efforts. The underlying poverty in the Gulf of Guinea must also be addressed, along with improved community engagement that includes coastal fisherman into national security planning.
In their report of the region, Dryad Global, a maritime risk management firm said “Without a tangible improvement in onshore conditions that create legitimate and sustainable alternatives to piracy it is extremely difficult to see that there has been or will be any substantive deterrence against individuals’ intent to participate in piracy.” If anti-piracy efforts are to succeed in the long-run, economic insecurity must be addressed for the coastal communities of the region. As the graph below illustrates, there is a slight relationship, between the unemployment rate of Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high-income countries) and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
Despite these challenges, there is reason to be optimistic about the future. Based on the eleven reported piracy incidents of piracy so far in 2025, by the year’s end, there may not be much more than twenty attacks in the Gulf of Guinea; this is still significantly lower than the average of nearly forty-six attacks annually between 2011 and 2020. Maritime piracy is trending downwards for the region, and international and regional actors and stakeholders have demonstrated an earnest interest in addressing the issue. The involvement of nations with more developed blue water navies can help train Gulf of Guinea nations as they develop more robust communications and intelligence networks under the framework laid out in the Yaoundé Code of Conduct. Additionally, Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project provides an example how individual nations can build upon the Yaoundé Code of Conduct and share information better, coordinate action, strengthen laws and invest in equipment, manpower and training with the explicit purpose of securing maritime borders for private and public investment.
For further information on piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and the rest of the world, the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre offers Live Piracy Maps and Reports, as well as Advice and Warnings to Masters (https://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php/piracy-reporting-centre).
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.