The creation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2023 is the most recent manifestation of a long process of political fragmentation in West Africa. These regional transformations are fueled by a more global rejection of Western-inspired integration models.
By Olivier Walther, 2/18/2025
A laboratory for integration
West Africa has long been a laboratory for regional integration. As early as the 1960s, more than a dozen organizations were set up to deal with very concrete problems, such as water resource management and the promotion of free trade between the newly independent countries.
This enthusiasm for institutions was initially inspired by the European experience. From Dakar to N’Djamena, West African organizations favored the construction of formal structures to promote political consultation and socio-economic exchanges.
For the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), harmonizing customs policies or introducing a common currency was seen as a necessary condition to increase regional trade.
A divided region
More recently, West African countries have been experimenting with a model that gives priority to interactions between socio-economic actors, such as traders, chambers of commerce, and local associations. Widespread in North America, this model relies on light, sometimes private, structures that work to reduce the imperfections of international trade. The transport corridors and One-Stop Border Posts that have flourished in the region over the past two decades exemplify this approach.
The failure of imported models
Sixty-five years after the independence of West African countries, progress made towards effective regional integration has been slow in the region. The failure of regionalism is both political and economic. In this respect, the creation of the AES by the Sahel’s military juntas confirms the political impasse in which multilateralism finds itself in the region.
ECOWAS has been hardest hit. Unable to enforce, by force or diplomacy, its own protocols designed to guarantee good governance and democracy, it has been deprived of the essential agro-ecological complementarities between Sahelian and coastal countries that justified its creation in 1975.
The current crisis is the culmination of a slow process of regional fragmentation. Few countries have a real interest in opening their borders and formalizing flows that feed an economy of predation, from border posts to the highest levels of government. Although signed with great fanfare, regional agreements on the free movement of goods and people are rarely implemented on the ground, as they threaten informal arrangements between political and business elites.
The temptation of bilateralism
The Sahelian crisis has prompted neighboring countries to opt for a bilateral approach. In Ghana, President John Mahama, whose country hosts the headquarters of the Accra Initiative aimed at federating regional efforts against terrorism, is multiplying his overtures towards Bamako and Ouagadougou. By normalizing their relations with the military juntas, the coastal countries are competing to ensure that the bulk of intraregional trade, both licit and illicit, go through their ports.
Further west, Senegal’s new president is also sending signs of goodwill towards the Sahelian putschists, with whom he shares a similar inclination towards neo-sovereignism. These exchanges present Senegal as a “good neighbor” sharing the same “African roots” as the Sahelians. Yet, as we demonstrate in a new OECD report, these populist declarations mask the weakness of investments in regional integration, particularly in the transport sector. No passenger train has run between Dakar and Bamako since 2010 and only two paved road cross the Sahara between the Atlantic Ocean and the Nile.
Too few Trans-Saharan roads
Sahel fatigue
The trend towards bilateralism among West African countries is having a profound impact on the multilateral institutions created in response to the Sahel crises, such as the G5 Sahel, the Sahel Alliance and the Sahel Coalition. All are questioning their usefulness.
Yet, it is the European Union (EU) that faces the greatest challenges. As the region’s largest donor, the EU has developed an integrated approach to promoting defense, diplomacy and development in the Sahel region. None of these pillars of multilateralism have been able to put an end to the violence. The last two years have been the deadliest on record in the Sahel, with 14,000 people killed according to ACLED – 15 times more than the war started in Mali in 2012.
In Brussels, Paris and New York, a certain Sahel fatigue now reigns. Omnipresent on the international scene just a few years ago, the Sahel is now relegated to the back burner of political priorities. The war in Ukraine and in Palestine get all the attention. At the Munich Security Conference, for example, no major event is devoted to the Sahel this year.
A global integration crisis
The slow decline of regional integration in West Africa is part of a global context marked by a rejection of the European model based on cooperation and respect for human rights. As Daniel Bach from Sciences Po told me, “In several respects, the crisis of West African institutions mirrors the inability of Europe’s model of integration to address new defense and security agendas”.
The growing military involvement of Russia and Turkey, who share little interest for the values promoted by the EU, has given a powerful boost to the regimes of the Sahel and further encouraged the fragmentation of the region.
By unilaterally imposing new tariffs on its economic partners, the United States have also demonstrated the fragility of the free-trade agreements on which the North American integration model was based. This loss of momentum is further accentuated by the withdrawal of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been one of the main pillars of soft power in the region.
Which model of integration?
Russia and China could be the big winners in the decline of Western-inspired regionalism in West Africa. Their involvement in the region already allows them to extract the most valuable resources (gold and oil) without openly interfering in the politics of African countries.
This alternative model, which circumvents routes that are controlled by Western countries, has proved popular in West Africa. Unlike the European model, it pays lip service to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Unlike the North American model, it doesn’t require transparency in the pursuit of free trade.
In the long term, however, it is illusory to think that an imported model can enable West Africa to develop its economic potential. For regional integration to work, it must take into more rigorous consideration the region’s socio‑economic and political specificities, notably the preponderance of informal trade, the importance of small towns, and the flexibility of its trade networks.
Developing an endogenous vision for the region is what will ultimately contribute to reduce the gap between regional integration as an institutional project and regional integration as an everyday reality.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Lacy Harris-Coble, Daniel Bach and Steve Radil for their comments. All errors are mine.