Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are about to set up a joint confederation after rejecting please and overtures from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Foreign ministers of the countries who were all colonized by France, met Friday in Niger’s capital Niamey to agree on a text establishing the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
“The objective was to finalise the draft text relating to the institutionalisation and operationalisation of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES),” said Niger Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare as he read the final statement late Friday.
Sangare explained that the text would be adopted by the heads of state of the three countries at a summit.
He did not give date when this would be.
“We can consider very clearly, today, that the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been born,” Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said after meeting General Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of Nigerien military regime.
The third foreign minister at the meeting was Burkina Faso’s Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore.
The Sahel region has been subject to deadly jihadist violence for years, which they accused France of not being able to curb.
The three countries said late January they were quitting The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which they said was under French influence, to create their own regional grouping.
The three governments who were part of the founding members, said it was a “sovereign decision” to withdraw from ECOWAS first established in 1975.
In a joint statement – that was read out on state broadcasters in the three countries – they said ECOWAS had “drifted from the ideals of its founding fathers and the spirit of Pan-Africanism.”
The statement said “the ECOWAS under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to member states and peoples,” adding that the ECOWAS had failed to help stop the jihadist violence in their countries.
Relations between the bloc and the three countries were tense after military coups took place in Niger in July, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Mali in 2020.
ECOWAS had called on all three countries to return to civilian rule.
As part of efforts to bring them back to the regional bloc, ECOWAS has since lifted almost all the sanctions imposed on the three countries.
