The Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, DCOP Lydia Yaako Donkor, has warned that a sophisticated trafficking model known as “Model Q” is reshaping human trafficking and migrant smuggling across West and Central Africa through the use of digital platforms and online deception.
Speaking at the opening of the EOCO-INTERPOL Regional Coordination and Case Resolution Workshop in Accra on July 6, DCOP Donkor said traffickers are increasingly abandoning traditional recruitment methods in favour of fake job offers, scholarships and business opportunities promoted through social media and fraudulent employment websites. Victims are often persuaded to pay processing fees via mobile money before being trafficked across borders.
She explained that once victims arrive at their destinations, they are stripped of their identity documents, subjected to psychological coercion, and forced into exploitative conditions. In many cases, victims are compelled to recruit others, creating a self-sustaining trafficking network that complicates investigations and blurs the line between victim and perpetrator.
DCOP Donkor stressed that the growing use of digital technologies and informal financial systems such as mobile money and hawala has made trafficking syndicates more difficult to detect, underscoring the need for stronger regional cooperation.
The three-day workshop, organised by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) in partnership with INTERPOL, has brought together investigators, prosecutors and intelligence officials from across West and Central Africa to strengthen cross-border collaboration, share intelligence and develop coordinated strategies to combat human trafficking, migrant smuggling and organised crime.
While reaffirming Ghana’s commitment under the Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694), the CID Director-General called for closer cooperation among law enforcement agencies, immigration authorities and financial intelligence units, stressing that only a united regional response can effectively dismantle transnational trafficking networks.