Extraction / Logistics and Infrastructure
On the evening of April 26, 2026, the Egyptian merchant vessel Sward was hijacked by armed men off the Somali coast. It was not an isolated incident. Three ships were hijacked off Somalia and nearby Yemen in the space of three weeks. As of May 8, the Honour 25 and Eureka oil tankers and the cargo ship Sward all remain under pirate control. Somali piracy, dormant since its peak in 2011, is back. For West African shipping operators, commodity exporters and port authorities, the return of this risk is not abstract.
Three converging causes
The resurgence is not random. Three structural factors have converged simultaneously.
Faced with the threat of Houthi attacks around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow chokepoint between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, major shipping firms opted for the long detour around southern Africa. This diversion adds two to three weeks and thousands of nautical miles to the journey, taking ships right past Somalia’s coastline, the same waters where Somali pirates staged a multiyear campaign of hijackings that peaked in 2011. The rerouting that was designed to avoid one threat has created exposure to another.
Analysts note that the diversion of anti-piracy patrols since 2023 to the Red Sea to counter Houthi attacks has created an opportunity. More recently, naval patrols of nations that previously helped contain piracy have been distracted or diverted towards ships trying to access the Strait of Hormuz. The surge in oil prices amid the US-Israel war on Iran has also made fuel tankers more valuable to pirates. Brent crude prices have risen by more than 50 percent since the start of the war, at more than $110 per barrel.
Development funds to Somalia were also cut. For years, the US funded development projects in Somalia, especially in coastal communities, to reduce poverty and stop young men from joining pirate groups. Under the current administration, however, nearly all non-security development aid has been suspended.
The third factor is political. Somalia is currently in constitutional crisis. In March, the federal government postponed the 2026 general election without due process and ordered the dissolution of the newly elected parliament in Somalia’s South West state. Distrust and skirmishes between Somalia’s various regions and its federal government led local elites to turn to piracy to fund military and political campaigns between 2005 and 2012. They may well be tempted to do so again.
The operational picture
On April 26, 2026, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported that unauthorized persons had seized a cargo vessel northeast of Garacad on Somalia’s central coast, forcibly redirecting the ship into Somali territorial waters. These hijackings relied on detailed knowledge of shipping lanes and vessel schedules. When successful, such hijackings produce ransom payments worth millions of dollars, funds that have often been recycled into weapons procurement and support for armed groups operating inland.
Somali pirate groups have also hijacked several ocean-going dhows as motherships in recent weeks, enabling them to remain at sea for weeks and launch attacks far from the coast.
The Houthi dimension adds another layer. The Puntland Maritime Police Force Deputy Director of Intelligence revealed in January 2026 that the Houthis and their partners had provided Somali pirates with weapons and GPS devices that improved their ability to track vessels. The proximity of the Eureka hijacking to the coast of Yemen raised concern over Houthi-Somali pirate collaboration.
What this means for West African shipping
The West Africa connection runs through two distinct channels. The first is direct. West African commodity exports, particularly oil from Nigeria and Ghana, bauxite and iron ore from Guinea, and cocoa and cashew from Ivory Coast, use shipping routes that pass through or near the Gulf of Aden corridor when heading to Asian markets. Higher insurance premiums, route diversions and ransom risk on those corridors translate directly into higher freight costs for West African exporters.
The second channel is indirect. The Cape of Good Hope rerouting that major shipping firms adopted to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb means more vessels are transiting West African waters than at any point in the past decade. Port authorities in Dakar, Abidjan, Conakry and Lagos have seen increased traffic. That traffic brings revenue, but it also increases the density of high-value vessels in West African waters, which historically has attracted opportunistic maritime crime.
Brent crude prices have risen more than 50 percent since the start of the Iran war and now exceed $110 per barrel. That price level makes every oil tanker transiting African waters a more attractive target than it was eighteen months ago.
The Gulf of Guinea had recorded historic lows in piracy incidents in 2025. The return of Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden, combined with elevated oil prices and the rerouting of global shipping through African waters, is the most significant shift in the maritime risk environment for the continent since the Houthi campaign began in 2023. West African operators who adjusted their strategies for lower risk are now operating in a fundamentally different environment.