The Sahel’s Intertwined Challenges
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- Authors: GILLES YABI
- Published: September 3, 2024
Political instability and insecurity
- Several non-state armed groups, including terrorists, have taken root over the past dozen years in the central Sahel region.
- According to the 2024 Global Terrorism Index, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are among the 10 countries most affected by terrorism worldwide.
- Military coups occurred in these three countries between 2020 and 2023:
- Mali: a two-stage putsch in September 2020 and April 2021.
- Burkina Faso: coups in January 2022 and September 2022.
- Niger: a coup in July 2023.
- Drivers and consequences:
- Some officers who seized power may have been motivated by a desire to improve the security situation; others by power and privilege.
- Popular frustration with deteriorating security and lack of economic and social progress under elected leaders provided a pretext for military takeovers.
- Armies are likely to exert a strong influence on political power in the region for several years to come.
- A decade of crises has produced lost educational opportunities: school closures, internal displacements, and worsening family destitution have left the current cohort of adolescents and children with little gain in knowledge and life skills, increasing risks of involvement in crime and terrorism.
- Worsening daily living conditions can prolong security and political crises and accentuate regional fragilities.
History matters
- The fragility of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger is linked to the legacy of French colonization and to the challenge of building political, economic, and social institutions within current borders.
- Building political institutions that inspire confidence in multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual populations is only a few decades old and has had varying degrees of success.
- The economic and financial crises of the late 1980s and 1990s, followed by macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment, reduced state capacity and increased dependence on international institutions.
- Multiparty systems and competitive elections returned in several countries, but democratization processes were fragile and constitutional provisions did not always materialize in political practice.
The prisons of power
- Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan’s theory identifies “prisons of power” with four main gatekeepers: big business; political party militants, allies, and courtiers; bureaucrats; and international experts.
- Mechanisms of capture and dependence:
- Political patrons must satisfy numerous interest groups by allocating ministries, posts, and small rewards, reinforcing clientelism.
- Business executives with political influence seek protection, tax exemptions, key government jobs for allies, and contracts, lying at the heart of systemic corruption linked to rising election costs.
- International experts and the international aid system contribute to a political economy that can nurture inefficient public policies and disappointing economic results: “The aid system, whether project aid, sectoral aid, or budget aid (the three remain intertwined), induces an unhealthy and paralyzing dependence.”
- These dynamics are present across West Africa and beyond; security crises add complexity to existing institutional capture and limited state-building success.
Investing in institutions and people
- Key institutional reforms and priorities proposed by WATHI:
- Strengthen institutions that control the use of public resources and combat corruption.
- Institutionalize citizen participation in public policy debate as an essential component of democratic governance.
- Adopt a deliberate institutional approach to reduce spatial inequalities by monitoring progress in the delivery of public services.
- Economic development context:
- Stabilizing Sahel countries is essential for sustainable economic development across a vast swath of the African continent.
- Despite COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, several West African countries (for example, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal) have achieved remarkable economic growth in recent years.
- Continued growth depends on maintaining security in their territories and on the perception of risk, which is affected by the situation in the Sahel.
- Recommendations for international financial institutions:
- Take the local context and adverse effects of externally driven interventions more seriously, especially in the Sahel.
- Work with countries to prioritize investing in and reforming education and vocational training to stimulate local economies based on crop production, raising livestock, and small-scale natural resource processing.
- Overarching conclusion:
- Throughout West Africa, sustainable economic and social progress—not to be confused with short-term economic growth—depends on refocusing efforts toward building institutions and investing in people.
The Sahel’s Intertwined Challenges — Gilles O. Yabi, F&D Magazine, September 2024.
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