Author: Luis Cabezas - Junior Researcher
Abstract: In the past few years, the Sahel region has suffered political disruptions of various kinds. Its continually evolving context has seen a diminished influence of France, the traditional stakeholder, while new actors, like Russia and China, have increased their presence in the region. The following paper aims to make sense of the past developments in the Sahel, focusing on the newly formed military governments of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. These three States have started to develop an autonomous economic, political, and military policy, mainly aimed at self-sufficiency, and filled with anti-Western and anti-colonial rhetoric. The recent history and political developments of each of these countries will be explored. Finally, the paper will make a brief mention of economic and regional integration theory and their application to this specific African context.
Introduction:
The Sahel region extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, dividing the Saharan desert from the Sudanian savanna. Its geography is characterized by its complexity, comprising arid, semiarid, and savannah biomes. The Sahel includes at least ten countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Chad. However, when referring to this region usually a narrower definition is used, including only six of them: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania. These are the countries where political turmoil has been the most prominent in the past years.
West African countries are part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This is a supranational institution centered around common security and integration in the economic and political spheres. The organization is comprised of 15 members: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Togo. Among the fundamental principles of ECOWAS, we can find inter-state cooperation, harmonization of policies and integration of programs, and the maintenance of regional peace, stability, and security. It is impossible to ignore the similarities between ECOWAS’ guiding principles and those of the European Union, despite the huge differences in the history and geography of both regions of the world.
During the past few years, the Sahel’s name has reached the global spotlight because of the several coups d’etat suffered by West African countries. The putschist trend is different from other African coups as the Sahel region has its own political, economic, and social situations that distinguish it from the rest of Africa. In fact, the Sahel historically had been under French colonial rule and continues to suffer from what many label French neocolonialism.
One of the most infamous instruments of French neocolonialism is the CFA Franc, a currency used by 14 countries in Western and Central Africa but controlled by France. CFA stands for African Financial Community – the legal framework established between France and its former colonies after their independence, which de facto helps France to keep its colonial privileges. In fact, the CFA Franc is directly linked to the value of the Euro, and the currency reserves are kept in the French treasury under the payment of a fee. Besides, the CFA agreements gave France the right to preferential treatment for the exploitation of natural resources such as gold, diamonds, copper, and uranium for nuclear purposes.
On the military side, the development and security framework of the G5 of the Sahel between Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger under French supervision was aimed at coordinating military efforts against Salafist militias and human traffickers. However, the efforts have not given the expected results, while France is allowed to keep military officials in Sahelian territory. One of the reasons is the unequalness of the agreement: while France, and Western countries in general, tend to consider Islamist terrorism a major security issue as its consequences can spill over to Europe, African countries tend to view the problem as one of many others. Moreover, the development agenda tends to be seen through the lens of protecting democracy and securing sustainable development, while African countries urgently need structural schemes that cannot be implemented through atomized initiatives. On the other hand, the G5 countries are unable to cooperate with each other because of political divergencies between their respective elites.
French supremacy in the Sahel started to crumble between 2020 and 2021, when two coups in Mali led to the rise of colonel Assimi Goita to leader of the country. Then, again in 2021, Chad and Guinea followed. In 2022, two coups finished with Ibrahim Traoré rising as the head of government. In 2023, Niger’s Mohamed Bazoum was toppled by his presidential guard, being replaced by the head of the presidential guard, Abdourahamane Tiani. The situation in Niger got very tense, with ECOWAS’ first reaction to the coups was to impose sanctions against putschists, and then plotting a military intervention in the region. The situation de-escalated soon after. In that very year the last coup occurred in Gabon when the military ended the reign of the Bongo dynasty. Ali Bongo’s family had gotten extremely rich thanks to the privileges granted by France.
Something that characterized these past coups, as noted by journalist Alexis Akwagyram during an interview with Al Jazeera, is that although they were not popularly driven, the military juntas were celebrated by the population because of the huge anti-French sentiment.
With the dwindling influence of France, new actors are starting to set their foot in Africa.
The Dragon and the Bear:
Many divergent opinions have been expressed about China’s growing influence in Africa. Some have characterized it as debt-based neo-imperialism. Others have contrasted Chinese actions in Africa with those of former colonial powers, viewing Beijing as a reliable and fair partner. In the Sahel region, China has become more and more assertive towards its support for security initiatives – this in order to protect Chinese investments in their Belt and Road initiative and its commodity-extraction operations (especially lithium). Moreover, they aim to protect Chinese nationals present in the region, increase Beijing’s light and heavy arms exports, and even use the operations as a test field for training the People’s Liberation Army. Moreover, China has aimed to increase its diplomatic capital by actively engaging in conflict mediation, like between the Tuareg militias and the government in Mali.
The former Soviet Union was very much engaged with geopolitical movements in the Sahel under the banner of decolonization. Now, Russia’s interest in the region intensified after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the following Western sanctions. Moscow aimed for security deals with the fragile Sahel states, having Mali as a key partner. The security deals were established through Russia’s most famous PMC, the so-called Wagner Group, in exchange of mining concessions. Russian mercenaries also participated in social media propaganda campaigns against French presence in the region, accusing France of collaborating with local jihadist forces, while the presence of PMCs tends to be viewed favorably by the local population. Russian presence has been so significant in the Sahel as to lead some analysts to suggest Russian involvement in the coups in Mali. Other analyses also identify Moscow’s presence in the Sahel as a way to have access to migration routes towards Europe, with the intention of using massive immigration as a weapon to destabilize Europe in a type of asymmetric warfare labeled Coercive Engineered Migration. Following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s fear of international isolation has pushed it towards further collaboration with the Sahel, starting with Mali, who had abstained during the UNGA meeting that condemned Russia’s “special operation”. With its renewed Africa Corps, the new face of Wagner in Africa after Prigozhin’s rebellion, Russia aims to keep its business in Africa unchanged, although it is clear that this rebranding of the well-known PMC is a signal of the Kremlin officially taking over Wagner’s operations, which had previously been referred to as a completely private business.
With regards to the West, France still has some allies in the region: ECOWAS countries, like Nigeria and Senegal, are still sympathetic towards Paris. However, the capacity of the West African organization to stop the democratic backsliding has shown futile, as sanctions and international condemnations of the military takeovers have been considered by local populations as further support for French imperialism. Even Chad, France’s historical ally and one of the strongest forces in the Sahel G5 framework, has also seen demonstrations against French troops stationed in their territory after they were expelled from Niger.
Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger: snapshot of three renewed players
A mostly arid zone subject to constant droughts, Burkina Faso gained its independence from France in 1960 (the “Year of Africa”) under the name of Upper Volta. A succession of coups and internal political struggles led to the rise of Captain Thomas Sankara first to prime minister and then, in 1983, to president. Known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”, Sankara’s rule was characterized by projects in favor of the needy in Burkina Faso, with mass constructions of schools, hospitals, water wells, as well as mass vaccination and alphabetization campaigns. According to UNICEF, the mass vaccination campaign in Burkina Faso potentially saved the lives of over 20, 000 children, while the reduction in school taxes made the Burkinabe literacy rate to rise from 13% to 70%, while in 2022 it was registered to have gone down to 40%. Sankara’s economic prospects were also centered around self-sufficiency, promoting the production and consumption of local products. Sankara’s Marxist-Leninist ideology also inspired him to have a strong view against the traditional patriarchal characteristics of Burkinabe society, openly advocating in favor of women’s rights; for example, by combatting female genital mutilation, a practice still in vigor up to this day in many African countries.
Sankara was strongly against any type of external economic aid, refusing his finance minister’s proposal of receiving IMF loans. Following the example of previous socialist governments, as well as Lee Kuan Yew’s plan for Singapore, Sankara proposed quinquennial plans aimed mostly at promoting local business, especially in agriculture, given that in the 80s almost 90% of all Burkina Faso’s citizens worked in the primary sector. Sankara’s foreign policy aimed to distance Burkina Faso from French and Western influence, seeking partnerships with many different actors like the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China, but also minor Western allies like Canada and Japan.
Thomas Sankara was assassinated in 1987, after a coup d’etat led by one of his former friends and coup partners, Blais Campaoré, who restored the privileges of the Burkinabe elites overruled by Sankara. Although the details about Sankara’s assassination remain unclear, Campaoré was found guilty in 2022 of the murder of the revolutionary leader, being sentenced to life in prison along ten other high-ranking officials.
Many have compared the figure of Ibrahim Traoré, the newly appointed Burkinabe head of government, with that of Thomas Sankara, both because of looks and rhetoric. Traoré has openly spoken against what he perceives as neocolonialism, as seen by his declarations at the Russia-Africa summit of 2023 in Saint-Petersburg, where he stated that:
“Slavery continues to impose itself on us. Our predecessors taught us one thing: a slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied. We do not feel sorry for ourselves, we do not ask anyone to feel sorry for us. The people of Burkina Faso have decided to fight, to fight against terrorism, in order to relaunch their development”.
Also gaining independence in 1960, Mali was under dictatorial rule until the return of democracy in 1992. However, since 2012, the country has been subject to insurgencies present in the north and the center by the Tuareg rebels, who aim to create an independent state named Azawad. The Tuaregs are a set of nomadic tribes that are present in northern Mali, Chad, and part of Libya. Although this ethnic group has been known historically for being rebellious, as seen by the constant revolts under French rule and then under independent Mali, the civil war that sparked in 2012 was different. In fact, Tuareg secular rebels joined forces with jihadist fighters, further complicating the already unstable Malian internal context. The rebels managed to capture the city of Timbuktu, an important trading center of the Malian empire, and declared it the capital of independent Azawad. However, infighting soon started against both groups regarding the management of their newly occupied territory. Disputes reached the point of secular Tuaregs withdrawing their independence claim and asking for help from the international community. Despite the important 2015 agreement between the Malian government and the MNLA, the secular Tuaregs, the country has continued its internal armed struggle, in a spiral of violence that also had France at its center, with thousands of deployed troops in counterterrorism efforts along with the G5 of the Sahel.
With the new strict collaboration between the Malian government and Moscow after the stepping down of Paris in 2022, new prospects appear on the horizon. The latest victory was the recapture of the city of Kidal, an important base for the Tuareg which had been snatched from the government in 2014. This has been considered an important success for the Malian government’s plan of national unification. Moreover, after the request of the Malian junta in June, MINUSMA, the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, ended its operations in December 2023, indicating a hard assertiveness of Mali to take security manners into its own hands.
Finally, the arid country of Niger, also suffering from the Tuareg rebellion, is of vital importance for Western security and economic interests. In fact, Niger is the producer of 4% of the world’s uranium and the second largest exporter to France, which obtained 20% of its uranium from Niger in 2022. Of course, this heavy metal is useful for producing nuclear energy. Moreover, the territory of Niger serves as a crossing point for migrants towards Europe. Niger’s unstable political atmosphere has led to the stationing of American and French troops in its territory to support the country’s fights against rebels. After the July 2023 coup, the country faced the risk of war as ECOWAS imposed sanctions and threatened a military intervention if deposed president Bazoum was not reinstated. The regional organization has a history of backing up its threats, as a military contingent of 7000 soldiers was sent to Gambia to pressure the government to accept defeat after the 2017 election. However, the juntas of Burkina Faso and Mali decided to back Niger, and the three countries established a military alliance in September (formally, the Alliance des États du Sahel, AES). Thus, an invasion of Niger by ECOWAS would have meant a general regional war. ECOWAS desisted from invading, and sanctions against the three juntas were lifted in February 2024, alleging humanitarian reasons.
A March 1st report by the African Development Bank estimated that Niger’s growth rate for 2024 would be 11.2%. This is based on the impact of the lifting of economic sanctions, but also considering oil revenues after the completion of the Niger-Benin pipeline, forecasting volumes of 90,000 barrels a day. Although these numbers should be good news for Niger, they must be taken with a grain of salt because for a country as poor as Niger, experiencing big growth is not uncommon. On the other hand, the Nigerien economy might not be able to cope with the global inflation rate, already putting a heavy strain on developing countries.
Integration theories and a new Sahelian confederation:
Regional integration can be defined as a process in which neighboring countries cooperate through common institutions and rules. In international relations we usually refer to two main spheres: economic and political. Economic integration is usually achieved through the liberalization of trade between two or more political units, and it is possible to conceive it as a process with several stages:
- Preferential Trading Area
- Free Trade Area
- Customs Union
- Common Market
- Economic Union
- Political Union
Each stage entails a deeper economic cooperation between countries until a political union, like a federation or confederation, is achieved.
The most famous theory of political integration is neofunctionalism (following David Mitrani’s Functionalism), developed by Ernst B. Haas to study the process of European integration after World War II. According to neofunctionalism, integration starts with states giving away part of their sovereignty in some sectors of low politics, like France and Germany did with the production of coal and steel. Vital for neofunctionalism is the concept of spillover, in which cooperation in one sector can “spill over” to others, further deepening the integration process. Integration tends to be initiated for normative reasons, like fostering prosperity and/or peace.
While the normative ground of European integration was maintaining peace after two devastating global conflicts, common enemies seem to be what pushed the Sahelian states further together. As mentioned before, extreme poverty, insecurity, violence from insurgents, hostile neighbors (ECOWAS), and the presence of negatively perceived foreigners (mostly French) created an unstable environment that could be used by the putschists to push towards the integration of a region that shares these common traits. Moreover, many have found similarities between Thomas Sankara’s anti-colonial ideals and rhetoric and the speeches and policies pursued by the juntas, underlining a common approach to their internal policies. For example, Niger’s junta announced back in December 2023 the nationalization of their water sector, finishing the over twenty-year partnership with the French company Veolia, while Burkina Faso decided to nationalize its sugar sector, which had been privatized back in 1998, as well as establish a new partnership with Russia for the construction of a nuclear powerplant to “cover the energy needs of the population”.
Regarding the level of economic integration of these three actors, the previous customs union provided by ECOWAS was abandoned in January 2024. This, of course, is expected to cause serious problems to the AES. Not having access to this west-African framework means losing access to the ports in Cote d’Ivoire, which has 40% of the GDP of the whole CFA zone. It would also mean diminished trade with big players like Nigeria, Burkina Faso’s biggest trading partner in ECOWAS. This is important considering that the three countries of AES are landlocked, the rivers that pass through their territories are not usable for trade, and land infrastructure like highways is very lacking. However, this last issue could be solved by Morocco’s initiative to provide access to the Atlantic Ocean to the AES countries through their ports and infrastructure. What is also uncertain is what regards the movement of people since many AES citizens living in ECOWAS countries would suddenly have more restrictive travel regulations.
On the other hand, in early February 2024, general Tiani of Niger hinted at the possibility of creating a common currency with Burkina Faso and Mali and thus abandon the West African Monetary Union that uses the CFA Franc. According to Thierno Thioune, an expert on monetary policies and unions between West African States, for a common currency to succeed, four requirements must be met: first, there must be coordination of macroeconomic and budgetary policies to maintain the stability of the currency and give confidence to potential investors. Second, strong monetary management institutions must be established, like a common central bank that is able to employ a sound monetary policy. Third, there is a need for an integrated common market, and fourth, mechanisms to solve crises, like common reserve funds and currency swap arrangements, must be put in place.
So far, it is hard to tell whether the AES countries have reached any of these requirements, although the ideas of creating a stabilization fund and a common investment bank have been mentioned. The previous experience within the CFA Franc zone could have given the AES countries important experience in managing a common currency. There is also the risk that ECOWAS countries could see this new monetary union as a threat, promoting the international isolation of the AES countries and generating a regional crisis, with one potential side effect being the depreciation of this new currency with respect to the CFA Franc.
Going back to political integration, it is possible to understand the process in the AES countries through the lenses of Neofunctionalism, although with important nuances. In fact, the starting point of collaboration between Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali was not the economic sphere, like in the European case, but in defense and security against a common threat- thus the formation of a military alliance. This means that the process was reversed, with political cooperation aiming to spillover to other areas. This process is similar to that of UNASUR in South America, which saw two customs unions, the Andean Community and MERCOSUR, suddenly organized under a political framework with ambitious integration goals that collapsed in less than a decade because of elites infighting. Although the Alliance of Sahelian States was launched back in September 2023, so far, no joint military exercises have been organized, and the alliance lacks an integrated command framework like the one of NATO. This could be an indicator of a short-lived alliance that has ambitious goals but not the means to achieve them.
Conclusion: integration beyond democracy
European integration and the processes that it inspired have been characterized by the promotion of liberal ideals like democracy, human rights, freedom of expression and a market economy. In fact, ECOWAS and the African Union, although sometimes with some divergences concerning the West, tendentially lean towards these ideals. The integration process of these Sahelian states shows an effort by non-Western leaders to attempt integration in total contrast to liberal ideals, i.e., through authoritarian means and centered around common enemies like terrorism and neocolonialism.
Of course, behind this integration effort creeps the shadow of past failed confederation attempts in the Sahel like Senegambia and the Malian Confederation. Something else to consider is whether Russia can indeed be a reliable partner for state-restructuring in the Sahel through the fight against insurgents. In fact, even though some successes were achieved, like the conquest of Kidal, Wagner has a series of failures behind, like their intervention in Mozambique. However, the AES countries might stand a chance if they manage to build lasting international partnerships with other important emerging blocs like the BRICS, as well as reduce ECOWAS’ hostility towards them.
The liberal world order is having cracks in many places, and France’s lost grip on west-Africa is only one. Regional integration initiatives, while seen by many as part of the upcoming multipolar world, might start to develop through authoritarian means and against democratic ideals. For example in Latin America, where the presence of extreme violence and transnational crime has made citizens and policymakers from various countries very sympathetic with the hardline policies of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.
These considerations could spark further research for new theories of integration that go beyond functionalism, proven to describe with accuracy the process in Europe, but seemingly incomplete to explain the multipolar, post-liberal future world.
Source Classification
Information Content | ||
1 | Confirmed | Confirmed by other independent sources; logical in itself; coherent with other information on the topic |
2 | Presumably true | Not confirmed; logical in itself; coherent with other information on the topic |
3 | Maybe true | Not confirmed; reasonably logical in itself; coherent with some other information on the topic |
4 | Uncertain | Not confirmed; possible but not logical in itself; no other information on the topic |
5 | Improbable | Not confirmed; not logical in itself; contradicts with other information on the topic |
6 | Not able to be evaluated | No basis to evaluate the validity of the information |
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