Continued....
I believe that the 'developed world' have to build a lot of bridges with certain African countries (if not all of them). Without going into entire volumes of history, the 'West' has exploited many African nations to quite an extraordinary extent. Looking at Somalia and the plight of their fishermen – western nations have been dumping toxic chemical waste into their watercourses for years – poisoning both the locals and the fish that used to thrive in them. This pollution has been both illegal and 'legal'. The illegal dumping can easily be imagined but the 'legal' dumping is practically the same – it's 'legal' because the country hasn't sufficiently legislated against massive multinationals tipping mercury into streams.
The bottom line though, is people's livelihood; in the UK, if you take someone's livelihood away from them, there is a safety net for them. When you take away the livelihood from someone without a safety net... people will go to extremes to provide for themselves and their families. If this means committing crime, then some people will resort to it. Most won't. But some will.
I'm not condoning their actions, but I can understand why they do it.