State security forces, militias and vigilante groups increasingly overlap, making insecurity more profitable and conflict harder to resolve.

Across Central Africa, it is becoming harder to distinguish between those tasked with providing security and those driving crime and conflict. The inability of governments to guarantee security encourages alliances among militias, community-based forces and national armies, complicating conflict management.

Across the Chad-Cameroon-Central African Republic (CAR) corridors, officials responsible for providing security are linked to kidnapping for ransom, livestock theft and trafficking. Chadian communities ‘tired of waiting’ for state protection have organised vigilance committees, often acting as first responders to kidnappings and other crimes.

In CAR, militias mobilised for local protection increasingly operate alongside national and allied security forces. The Azandé Ani Kpi Gbé for example collaborated with both the security forces and Russia’s Wagner group, while retaining its own command structures and influence. The relationship has since deteriorated, showing how hybrid security arrangements evolve.

In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), United Nations-sanctioned Wazalendo militias have fought alongside the national army against the M23 rebellion. Yet the group’s increasing association with human rights abuses, illegal taxation and illicit natural resource exploitation fuels scepticism about its motives among communities and sections of the army.

Similar patterns exist in the Lake Chad Basin, where vigilante groups’ operations range from tacit state support to overt mobilisation against Boko Haram. Though backed by some governments in the region, these groups struggle to simultaneously maintain community trust, support state efforts, and withstand co-option by Boko Haram and other militias.

In South Sudan, ongoing conflict and criminal activity have produced a diverse mix of community defence and vigilante groups. These include factions aligned to the government, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in-Opposition, and local armed actors whose priorities are often more local than national.

Institute for Security Studies (ISS) fieldwork indicates that monyemiji (age-graded social groups) are rooted in longstanding systems of local protection. Others, including the Arrow Boys, Gelweng and White Army, emerged as community defence groups, but have taken on the characteristics of rebels fighting the state and rival ethnic defence groups.

These dynamics reflect external and internal pressures on armed groups, including infiltration by politicians who weaponise them against the government and other rivals. And while the state often calls such groups rebels, their local image of protecting communal assets (people, land and resources) coexists alongside violence, predation and abuses.

Likewise, Fulani hunter groups defend communities against kidnapping and cattle theft but also attack other armed groups, operating between self defence and insurgency.

In South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria and Unity states, groups that ISS interviewees described as militias now perform governance functions such as collecting revenue. They also set up illegal checkpoints to control movement and extort money from the public. Authority is exercised through chiefs and local power brokers, with entire areas governed outside state control. Loyalty is often tied to powerful people participating in formal structures and local militias.

ISS researchers were told that some soldiers use militias to gain access to resources, protection and local authority greater than what the government can provide. Arms are circulated through networks linking local actors to official security figures, blurring the line between formal and informal power. Interviewees said some non-state actors are better armed and more powerful than state security forces.

Collaboration between official security forces and armed groups ranges from ad hoc alliances to more sustained but contingent partnerships. In eastern DRC, the state-backed Wazalendo has become an enduring national army partner against M23, not out of loyalty, but to counter a stronger adversary and avoid being targeted as rivals. For the army, this means extra personnel, local knowledge and access to terrain – despite some groups’ documented abuses.

In CAR, cooperation between national and allied forces, and militias, has enabled the latter to expand their operational scope while maintaining local autonomy.

Economic incentives also sustain security bargains. In eastern DRC, control over mining sites, transport routes and timber production provides income for those involved in security provision and resource extraction. In the DRC-CAR-South Sudan tri-border region, kidnapping and cross-border trade create systems where protection, enforcement and profit overlap.

These patterns reshape insecurity in three ways.

First, they create fertile ground for violence and exploitation with little accountability. In CAR and eastern DRC, militias operating alongside state and allied forces have been linked to extortion at checkpoints and violence against civilians. In South Sudan, similar abuses occur, with civilians often unable to distinguish who is responsible or where to seek redress.

Second, security alliances increase the number of conflict actors. In eastern DRC, army-militia cooperation hasn’t consolidated authority but extended multiple actors’ reach across the same areas.

Third is the criminalisation of security. In CAR, conflict economies linked to mining and illicit cross-border trade drive violence. In the DRC tri-border region with CAR and South Sudan, similar dynamics tie security provision to resource extraction and illicit trade. As actors become embedded in these systems, insecurity becomes economically self-sustaining.

Policy responses must move beyond fixed categorisations and focus on who is doing what. Where actors perform similar roles, understanding how they operate matters more than how they are classified.

Bringing local militias and vigilante groups into formal security structures offers no simple solution. While integration can extend state reach, it may also embed coercive practices within state institutions, complicating accountability, blurring lines further and risking entrenching actors who seek instability.

Policymakers face difficult choices. Excluding informal armed groups can create security vacuums, especially when they are more powerful than official security forces. But uncritical engagement with such groups risks reinforcing harmful practices.

Effective responses should improve protection and accountability at local level. This could include strengthening operational and material support for vigilance committees and raising community awareness about these committees’ role.

Such stopgap measures should complement the long-term work of addressing weak state security and governance, which are what drive communities to rely on non-state armed groups in the first place.

Written by Titilope F Ajayi, Senior Research Consultant, Central Africa Observatory, ISS