The weaponization of football dreams in human trafficking schemes

Abstract

This Brief Report highlights how football (i.e. soccer) dreams are weaponized to traffic youth within West Africa. Framed as an athletic opportunity, the operation exploited the Economic Community of West African States’ visa-free protocols, digital platforms, and the powerful appeal of sport-based mobility. Victims were confined, stripped of documentation, and coerced into soliciting funds from family members, with their phones repurposed to perpetrate further acts of fraud. While trafficking for forced criminality has gained visibility in Southeast Asia, this case marks a critical yet underexplored intra-African iteration, shaped by the symbolic economy of football. It challenges siloed policy frameworks that treat sport aspiration and cybercrime in West Africa as separate domains.