The Southern African consultative meeting of police chiefs in Kasane this week comes at a time when data from the Africa Organised Crime Index 2025 shows that criminal networks across the continent are expanding faster than the systems meant to contain them.
Commissioner Dinah Marathe’s warning that the region is facing “complex and evolving criminal threats” from drug trafficking and wildlife poaching to cybercrime and financial crimes aligns closely with the Index’s findings that criminality across Africa has steadily increased between 2019 and 2025. The report notes that Africa has become deeply embedded in the global criminal economy, serving simultaneously as a source, transit hub and destination for illicit markets.
Southern Africa’s average criminality score rose to 4.88 in 2025, reflecting a +0.45 increase since 2019. While not the highest on the continent, the upward trajectory confirms Commissioner Marathe’s assertion that the region is experiencing increasingly organised and networked criminal threats.
The highest-scoring criminal markets in Southern Africa are financial crimes at 6.0, fauna crimes at 5.77, non-renewable resource crimes at 5.31, heroin trade at 5.15 and cannabis trade at 4.96. These categories directly echo the issues raised in Kasane: wildlife poaching, illegal mining, drug trafficking and financial crimes, including money laundering.
Minister of State President, Defence and Security Moeti Mohwasa emphasized that infrastructure such as the Kazungula Bridge represents both economic opportunity and criminal vulnerability. The Index similarly highlights that Africa’s expanding transport corridors, containerisation and trade networks have increased opportunities for organised crime to operate across borders. As borders open for 24-hour operations, as recently announced for Kazungula, enforcement coordination becomes even more critical.
At a continental level, criminal markets in 2025 average 5.11 out of 10, while criminal actors score even higher at 5.58, indicating that organised criminal networks are often more adaptive and influential than state responses. Crucially, the report identifies state-embedded actors as the most prevalent facilitators of organised crime since 2019, undermining governance and weakening institutional responses.
This finding reinforces the minister’s call for harmonised legal frameworks, stronger anti-money laundering systems and sustained political will across Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Despite rising criminality, Southern Africa shows relative strength in certain resilience indicators. In 2025, it scored highest among all African regions for international cooperation at 5.54 and national policies and laws at 5.12. That performance is significant given that the Kasane meeting itself is built around cross-border coordination under SADC and Interpol frameworks. However, resilience overall continues to lag behind criminality across Africa. The report highlights an inertia in resilience, with response systems consistently scoring lower than criminal markets. This gap mirrors Commissioner Marathe’s concerns about porous borders, information-sharing delays and uneven legal systems that criminal syndicates exploit.
The Commissioner’s warning about criminals misusing artificial intelligence and other digital tools also aligns with the Index’s expansion of criminal categories to include cyber-dependent crimes and financial crimes. As Africa undergoes rapid digital transformation, technological advancement creates parallel vulnerabilities that organised networks are quick to exploit.
For Southern Africa, the data reinforces the argument that isolated national responses are no longer viable. Criminal networks link wildlife trafficking to financial laundering systems and drug trafficking corridors, moving fluidly across jurisdictions. The Africa Organised Crime Index 2025 suggests that the region stands at a crossroads. Criminality is rising, but cooperation mechanisms remain comparatively strong. The challenge, as both Commissioner Marathe and Minister Mohwasa implied, is whether those mechanisms can move from dialogue to measurable disruption of criminal economies.
If criminal networks move as a pack, as the Commissioner said, the evidence suggests law enforcement must do the same faster, more integrated and technologically ahead of the threat curve.
