The Sahel After ECOWAS: Food Security and Sovereignty Under the AES

The AES exit: what the post-ECOWAS political map looks like #

The three juntas notified ECOWAS of their joint withdrawal on January 28, 2024, established the Alliance of Sahel States by the Liptako-Gourma Charter signed in Bamako in September 2023, and formalized confederation status at the Niamey summit on July 6, 2024. ECOWAS, after a one-year statutory period, acknowledged the exit on January 29, 2025, with a six-month transitional window for trade and free movement. The AES Council of Heads of State now coordinates a defense pact, a planned investment bank seeded at 500 million dollars of authorized capital, and a study commission for a common AES currency to replace the West African CFA franc. The CFA exit remains a policy intent rather than an executed monetary action: the three states continue to use the franc CFA pegged at 655.957 to the euro under the BCEAO arrangement as of Q1 2026.

The democracy book is unambiguous. V-Dem 2025 places Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in the bottom decile of its Liberal Democracy Index, with Mali's score at 0.08, Burkina Faso at 0.09, and Niger at 0.10 on the 0 to 1 scale. Freedom House 2025 classifies all three as Not Free, with aggregate scores of 9 (Mali), 22 (Burkina), and 16 (Niger) out of 100. Transition charters extended military rule by five years in Burkina Faso (May 2024 national dialogue), by an indefinite period in Mali after the April 2024 suspension of political parties, and by an unspecified horizon in Niger after the December 2024 national consultation. The AfCFTA position is unresolved: Mali, Burkina, and Niger ratified the AfCFTA framework before the coups, the AU has not suspended ratification, but operational integration via the Guided Trade Initiative has stalled.

Coordination with the Coastal Four (Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin) has reorganized around bilateral agreements rather than ECOWAS protocols. Niger reopened the Benin border in late 2024 after a closure tied to the post-coup sanctions episode. Mali and Senegal signed a 2024 transit accord under Pastef's Diomaye Faye administration that preserves landlocked Mali's access to Dakar port. Burkina Faso's overland trade still routes substantively through Lome and Tema, and the AES has not erected internal tariff walls.

Cadre Harmonise: 17 million food-insecure and the lean season #

The March 2025 Cadre Harmonise round, the regional consensus exercise run by CILSS with FAO, WFP, FEWS NET, and national statistical agencies, projected 16.7 million people in Phase 3 (Crisis) or worse across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger during the June to August 2025 lean season, the standard regional peak. The breakdown places approximately 2.5 million in Burkina Faso, 1.4 million in Mali, and 3.0 million in Niger in Phase 3 or worse, with the balance of the headline figure attributable to Phase 2 stress populations under the broader CILSS reporting envelope. Burkina Faso continues to host the only Phase 5 (Catastrophe) populations recorded in West Africa, concentrated in besieged communes in the Sahel and Centre-Nord regions, with WFP estimating residual catastrophe-level caseloads in Djibo and Arbinda after multi-year encirclement.

The funding gap is structural. WFP's Sahel regional response plan for 2025 sought roughly 1.5 billion dollars across the three AES countries plus Mauritania and Chad, against confirmed pledges that left the operation funded at approximately 35 to 40 percent at mid-cycle. The EU suspended budget support to Niger after July 2023, paused most non-humanitarian aid to Mali after 2022, and froze direct disbursements to Burkina Faso in early 2024. The United States cancelled the Niger Millennium Challenge compact (437 million dollars) in March 2024 and suspended Title II food assistance pathways tied to security cooperation triggers. Humanitarian carve-outs continue, but the modality has shifted from government-channel budget support to UN agency and INGO direct delivery.

The lean season is amplified by trade frictions. ECOWAS lifted formal sanctions on Niger in February 2024, but post-exit regulatory uncertainty has thinned formal cross-border cereal flows. WFP's Sahel cross-border trade monitor recorded 2024 maize and millet flows at roughly 60 to 70 percent of the 2019 to 2021 average. Local cereal prices in Ouagadougou and Niamey ran 35 to 60 percent above the five-year average through Q1 2026, against a regional CFA franc inflation print of 3.5 percent, indicating supply-side rather than monetary drivers.

Conflict, territory, and the rotation to the Africa Corps #

ACLED recorded approximately 7,800 organized political violence fatalities in Burkina Faso in 2024, more than 3,400 in Mali, and roughly 1,900 in Niger, with 2024 totaling the highest single-year fatality count for the central Sahel since the dataset's regional coverage began in 1997. The International Crisis Group's 2024 estimate that roughly 25 to 40 percent of Burkina Faso's national territory sits outside effective state control, contested between JNIM, the Sahel branch of the Islamic State, and Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland militias, has remained operationally consistent through Q1 2026 per ACLED control-of-territory proxies. Mali's Kidal recapture in November 2023 reasserted Bamako's nominal control over the north but did not close the JNIM corridor between Mopti, Segou, and the Burkinabe border.

The security architecture has rotated. MINUSMA closed in December 2023 after Bamako's expulsion request. Operation Barkhane completed its Niger withdrawal by December 22, 2023. The Wagner Group footprint in Mali (estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 personnel at peak in 2023) was rebadged after the August 2023 Prigozhin death and is now coordinated under the Russian Ministry of Defense's Africa Corps, with reporting suggesting roughly 1,500 to 2,000 personnel split across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger by mid-2025. The Moura operation (March 2022, Mali) and the Solhan and Karma episodes (Burkina Faso) remain documented in UN Human Rights Council and HRW investigations, with civilian casualties attributed to joint FAMa-Wagner and FASO-VDP operations.

Displacement compounds the food picture. UNHCR and IOM DTM data show approximately 2.0 million internally displaced in Burkina Faso, 360,000 in Mali, and 510,000 in Niger as of late 2024, with an additional 2.5 to 3.0 million displaced across the broader Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad). Burkina Faso's IDP caseload has fallen from a 2023 peak of 2.06 million as some Centre-Nord and Est returns have been recorded, but the displacement system has not stabilized: communes under siege still cycle populations between IDP and besieged-resident status. (Reference: Strategos geopolitical platform.)

Resource sovereignty: uranium, gold, and the AES currency proposal #

Niger's uranium book is the most consequential single rotation. Orano (formerly Areva) operates the Somair joint venture (63.4 percent Orano, 36.6 percent Niger state via Sopamin) at the Arlit complex. The Cominak mine closed in March 2021 after exhausting reserves. The Niger junta suspended Orano's Imouraren license (estimated 200,000 tonnes uranium reserves, one of the largest undeveloped deposits globally) in June 2024, and Somair production was halted in late 2024 amid an export blockage through Benin. Orano filed for ICSID arbitration in late 2024 over Imouraren and entered a separate dispute on Somair governance. Niger's annual uranium output ran near 2,000 tonnes U during the 2010s, declined toward 1,500 tonnes through the early 2020s, and Q4 2024 to Q1 2026 output sits well below historical baseline given the export and operational disruptions per Orano's quarterly disclosures.

The gold book has held up. USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries place Mali's annual industrial-scale gold production at roughly 60 to 75 tonnes (Mali ranks third or fourth in Africa) and Burkina Faso's at roughly 50 to 60 tonnes, with both figures excluding artisanal production estimated at an additional 30 to 50 tonnes per country. The Mali junta's 2023 Mining Code increased state and local participation rights to up to 30 percent in new permits, raised royalty bands, and introduced a windfall profits trigger above defined gold price thresholds. Barrick's Loulo-Gounkoto complex (the single largest contributor to Mali's official gold revenue) entered a tax and royalty dispute with Bamako in late 2024 with operational suspension extending into 2025; the Yatela and Morila legacy assets were nationalized into the SOREM state vehicle in 2024. B2Gold's Fekola, Allied Gold's Sadiola, and Hummingbird's Yanfolila continue to operate under renegotiated terms.

The AES common currency proposal, advanced at the July 2024 Niamey summit, remains a study item. The three states have not designated a central bank, a parity, or a transition timetable. Operational decoupling from the BCEAO would require resolving roughly 20 to 25 percent foreign exchange reserve pooling at the BCEAO and the French Treasury operations account legacy. In the interim, the AES has accelerated bilateral payment arrangements with Russia (rouble-denominated wheat and fertilizer trade), the UAE (gold off-take through Dubai DMCC), and China (RMB-denominated infrastructure tranches under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation framework).

The climate amplifier: Sahel temperatures, Lake Chad, and rainfall variability #

The IPCC AR6 Working Group I report and the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal place Sahel mean temperature rise at approximately 1.5 times the global average since 1950, with the Central Sahel band warming roughly 1.2 to 1.5 degrees Celsius against a global mean rise near 1.1 degrees over the same window. AR6 regional projections place additional warming for the West African Sahel at 2.0 to 4.3 degrees Celsius by 2081 to 2100 under SSP3-7.0 against the 1995 to 2014 baseline. Rainfall projections diverge by sub-region: the western Sahel shows a wetting tendency in CMIP6 multi-model means, the central and eastern Sahel show drying or no robust signal, and intra-seasonal variability (longer dry spells punctuated by intense rainfall events) is robustly projected across the region.

Lake Chad has shrunk from approximately 25,000 square kilometers in the 1960s to a long-term mean below 2,000 square kilometers in recent decades per Lake Chad Basin Commission and FAO monitoring, though seasonal recovery has been observed in wetter years through the 2010s. Roughly 30 million people depend on the Lake Chad basin's water and grazing systems across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, and the basin hosts active Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province operations that compound the climate stress on livelihoods. The combination produces a recursive displacement loop: climate stress thins margin, conflict displaces, displacement concentrates pressure on remaining productive land.

Mali's Cotton Belt, historically centered in the Sikasso, Koutiala, and Bougouni zones operated through the CMDT parastatal, recorded a sharp output collapse in the 2022 to 2023 season tied to fertilizer pricing, jassid pest pressure, and farmer protest over delayed input subsidies. Mali's seed cotton output fell from approximately 760,000 tonnes in 2021-22 to roughly 380,000 tonnes in 2022-23, recovering partially in 2023-24. CMDT's 2024-25 campaign targeted recovery to 700,000 tonnes; preliminary harvest data suggest output landed below target. Burkina Faso, historically alternating with Mali for the West African cotton lead position, recorded similar volatility, with SOFITEX's 2022-23 campaign well below the 2018 benchmark of approximately 700,000 tonnes.

Investment landscape under junta sovereignty: where bilateral capital still flows #

Western development finance has narrowed but not vanished. The World Bank IDA portfolio in the three countries continues at roughly 3.5 to 4.0 billion dollars in active commitments combined, concentrated in human development, energy, and resilience operations executed through UN agencies and INGO implementers. AfDB lending continues under Article 7 sovereign frameworks. The IMF has maintained Article IV surveillance, and Niger has an ECF arrangement that was placed in extended off-track status after the July 2023 coup with conditional re-engagement explored in 2024 to 2025. Bilateral DFIs (FMO, Proparco, BII, DEG) have largely paused new commitments pending governance benchmarks.

Non-Western flows have backfilled. Russia signed wheat and fertilizer protocols with all three AES states in 2023 to 2024, including a 25,000-tonne wheat donation to Burkina Faso in late 2023 and follow-on tranches through 2025. China's portfolio runs through ICBC, Sinopec, and CMOC channels, with Niger's SORAZ refinery and the Zinder to Cotonou pipeline (Wapco) representing the largest single industrial linkage; export disruptions through Benin in 2024 reduced realized cash flow against nominal capacity. The UAE has expanded gold off-take and aviation infrastructure exposure, with Dubai DMCC remaining the largest single re-export hub for both formal and informal AES gold flows. Turkey's Bayraktar TB2 supply and pilot training, and Iranian protocol talks reported in 2024, sit alongside the Russian security partnership rather than displacing it.

The investible book under junta sovereignty concentrates in three buckets. First, gold majors with renegotiated fiscal terms and operational continuity: B2Gold, Allied Gold, Endeavour, Hummingbird, IAMGOLD's Essakane in Burkina Faso. Second, downstream uranium and oil tied to non-Western buyers: Niger's CNUC and Sopamin equity, Wapco's pipeline economics, and SORAZ refinery off-take to Chinese state buyers. Third, the lithium prospect at Goulamina (Mali, operated by Ganfeng Lithium after the Leo Lithium exit) and the Falea uranium-lithium-copper polymetallic project. Each bucket prices security risk, sanctions exposure (OFAC SDN listings on individual junta figures and security entities have proliferated), arbitration tail risk (Orano, Barrick, Leo Lithium), and currency redenomination risk under the AES monetary proposal. The bilateral capital still flows; the legal architecture under which it flows is being rewritten in real time.

Sources #

• Cadre Harmonise March 2025 results, CILSS, FAO, WFP, FEWS NET
• WFP Sahel Crisis Response, 2025 funding requirements
• ACLED, Sahel and West Africa political violence dashboard, 2024 annual
• International Crisis Group, Burkina Faso reporting, 2024 to 2025
• IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, West and Central Africa, 2024 reports
• Orano press releases on Imouraren and Somair, 2024 to 2025
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, gold and uranium chapters
• IMF Article IV consultations, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger
• World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, Sahel projections
• IPCC AR6 Working Group I, Africa regional chapter
• V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2025
• Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2025 country reports