1 Department of Geography and Natural Resources Management, University of Uyo, Nigeria.
Abstract
The convergence of organised crime and the global solid minerals trade has become one of the most consequential, and least regulated, security challenges of the twenty-first century. As demand for gold, coltan, tin, tungsten, cobalt and lithium accelerates under the pressures of digitalisation, electrification and defence procurement, criminal networks loosely grouped under the label "mafia" have moved from the margins of the extractive sector to its operational core in large parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. This article develops an integrated conceptual and empirical account of how such networks capture artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) zones, launder mineral value through opaque trading chains, and convert proceeds into financing for armed insurgency and, in several documented cases, into direct or indirect support for organisations designated as terrorist entities. Drawing on a synthesis of policy reports, sanctions actions, investigative journalism and academic literature, the article maps the typology of mafia actors operating in the minerals space, details their operational repertoire, and traces the mechanisms by which mineral rents are transformed into weapons, fighters and territorial expansion for armed groups such as the AFC/M23 coalition, ISWAP, JNIM and Wagner-linked networks. A central contribution of the article is its documentation of an emerging and under-theorised phenomenon: the use of cult-style initiation rites, oath-taking, blood covenants and secret-society structures historically associated with campus and urban cultism, as a formal condition of membership and labour discipline within mafia-controlled mining camps. The article argues that this "new mafia architecture" functions as a low-cost, high-loyalty human-resource technology that binds recruits through spiritual and social sanction rather than contract, making detection, defection and prosecution significantly harder. The article concludes with a comparative policy framework for supply-chain due diligence, community-centred security and criminal-justice responses appropriate to a genuinely global problem.
Keywords: Solid minerals; artisanal mining; organised crime; mafia; terrorism financing; conflict minerals; cultism; recruitment; illicit trade.
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