Burkina Faso revealed in February that it planned to create a confederation with neighboring Mali, which President Traore elaborated on in an exclusive interview with Sputnik in late July. Those two and their mutual Nigerien neighbor then formed the Sahelian Alliance in mid-September nearly three months after that last-mentioned country’s coup. This platform created the basis upon which to include Niger in the planned Burkinabe-Malian Confederation according to their Foreign Ministers’ latest joint statement.
This development will transform continental dynamics for several reasons, the first of which is that it represents the most ambitious political integration project in Africa. Interestingly enough, it’s not being led by any established group like the AU or ECOWAS, but by three of their suspended members. Furthermore, while Niger still hosts two US bases as part of an implied compromise that was explained here, that country and its fellow confederates are led by what’s deemed to be multipolar governments.
Their shared worldview and the similar security threats that they face, which include conventional ones like France and a threatened Nigerian-led ECOWAS invasion alongside unconventional threats such as armed rebellions and terrorist insurgencies, played the greatest role in bringing them together. Their military-led governments realized that each of these can most effectively be thwarted for the greater good of regional stability by closely cooperating to that end, ergo mid-September’s Sahelian Alliance.
Once they built enough trust with one another through these security-driven means, they then decided to take their cooperation to the next level by inviting Niger to join the planned Burkinabe-Malian Confederation, which is sensible considering that all three have shared economic interests too. They’re former French colonies that had hitherto been ruthlessly exploited by Paris prior to their respective military-led multipolar revolutions leading to an ideational revolution among their societies.
The populace is now much more informed about the structural nature of their problems, and this has in turn created the support required for their governments to explore more comprehensive integration with one another. These three countries have impressive mineral deposits and plenty of agricultural potential, each of which could be developed for their people’s benefit if such projects are properly managed and the profits equitably distributed among them.
That’s precisely what they envisage doing, hence why they’re working towards placing their resources under a single administrative structure so as to optimize that, especially regarding the creation of a unified customs space that’ll protect their economies and enhance their competitive edge. It’ll of course take some time to reap the fruits of this vision, but throughout the interim, these countries can rely on varying degrees of Russian assistance.
Niger’s ties with Russia will likely remain limited owing to the continuance of American military there brought about by those two’s earlier mentioned implied compromise between them, but Burkina Faso and Mali’s have expanded over the past year to include military, agricultural, and mining dimensions. This comprehensive package of support will help that part of the planned confederation ensure its people’s physical, food, and financial security, thus raising the prospects that their plans will succeed.
In the event that the Sahelian Confederation enters into being, then it’ll comprise a total of more than 65 million people (whose countries are among the fastest-growing in the world) spread out over a little more than 1 million square miles/2.78 million square kilometers. To put these statistics into perspective, that’s around as many people as France in a newly formed country that’s almost as large as India. If Russia can successfully help stabilize this confederation, then it’ll surely transform continental dynamics.