By 
The Sahel is at acute risk of becoming a global flashpoint, with extremist groups gaining ground across the region, and external powers waging proxy conflicts and reshaping critical-mineral supply chains to their liking. To avoid this disastrous outcome, revitalized regional cooperation is essential.
LONDON – Africa’s Sahel region is enduring a period of rapid change – and deepening instability. Military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – now known as the Central Sahel – have rejected traditional partnerships with the West in favor of new patrons: China and Russia. Add to that the fragmentation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the region’s geopolitical map is being redrawn, with consequences that stretch far beyond West Africa.
- Weaponizing Data Against Democracy
Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images - In AI We Trust?
DrAfter123/Getty Images - The New Face of Protest
Andrej Isakovic/Getty Images
Geopolitical developments are not the only source of volatility in the Sahel. Accelerating climate change – temperatures in the region are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average – is disrupting traditional lifestyles, undermining livelihoods, and threatening food security. But shifts in the regional balance of power are making matters much worse.
As of last month, French troops have withdrawn from the Sahel altogether, following the severing of defense ties by the region’s governments, from Mali to Chad. This process, together with the collapse of United Nations peacekeeping efforts, has created a security vacuum that extremist groups have quickly moved to fill. The likes of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) are carrying out an alarming 35-40 attacks per week across the region – up 15% year on year.
Paralyzed by the wave of regime change across what has become known as the “coup belt,” and dealt a heavy blow by the recent departure of the Central Sahel countries, ECOWAS – once a pillar of regional stability – has struggled to mount a coordinated response to the surge in violent extremism. Extremists have exploited the deadlock in the fractured bloc to establish themselves as de facto authorities in a growing number of Sahelian communities. While the election of new African Union leadership offers a promising opportunity to re-energize the continent’s collective response to these developments, extremist groups continue to capitalize on regional instability.
In areas where the state’s presence is weak and competition for resources is high, such groups leverage their understanding of local grievances, as well as their ties to global extremist networks, to position themselves as providers of resources and guarantors of justice. As they enhance their legitimacy by maintaining order, distributing food, and managing land disputes, they deliberately weaken state institutions and exacerbate resource shortages to deepen dependency on their parallel governance structures.
This calculated and insidious strategy has been on display in the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) Complex of national parks – West Africa’s largest protected wilderness area, shared by Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Once a model of cross-border cooperation, the WAP Complex has been closed since 2019, and extremist groups have exploited gaps in management to assert control over local security, taxation, and resource exploitation in some areas.
Winter Sale: Save 40% on a new PS subscription 
Winter Sale: Save 40% on a new PS subscription
At a time of escalating global turmoil, there is an urgent need for incisive, informed analysis of the issues and questions driving the news – just what PS has always provided.
Subscribe to Digital or Digital Plus now to secure your discount.
Subscribe Now
Meanwhile, external actors, such as Russia, have been leveraging political instability and weak governance to strengthen their foothold in the Sahel and secure access to strategic resources like uranium and other minerals. More broadly, the Sahel has become a key theater in an escalating global competition for geopolitical influence.
All this means the region – in particular, the Central Sahel – could become a global flash point, with extremist groups embedded in communities, and external powers waging proxy conflicts and reshaping critical-mineral supply chains to their liking. The resulting volatility would almost certainly have spillover effects beyond the region – and even beyond Africa. As escalating conflicts draw in a growing number of actors and worsen the Sahel’s humanitarian crisis, a surge in destabilizing migration flows would be all but guaranteed.
To avoid this outcome, the Sahel’s ongoing geopolitical realignment must be managed through revitalized regional cooperation. A key element of this approach, as described in a recent report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is a new Sahel Compact, which incorporates governance reforms, security measures, and the strengthening of economic resilience into a single framework. Implementation will require a clear and feasible strategy to address the intertwined challenges the region is facing.
Unlike past initiatives to strengthen regional stability, which tended to focus on isolated interventions, the Sahel Compact would emphasize not only sustained coordination, but also external support. Rather than deliver prescriptive diktats, however, Western governments must foster partnerships that respect the agency of African states. New players in the Sahel, such as the Gulf states and China, must also buy into a collective vision for revitalizing regional cooperation.
By aligning resource governance with security and economic development, and building genuine partnerships with West African governments, the international community can help foster long-term resilience and stability in the Sahel. But whether this will be possible amid the unfolding global contest for geopolitical influence remains an open question. One hopes that global players recognize just how high the costs of inaction would be, and get the geopolitics right, before the Sahel’s downward spiral becomes irreversible.
Comments