On September 16th, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger signed a pact to strengthen relations in the Sahel region of Africa after agreeing to enter into a military and economic alliance. As former colonies of France, they agreed to support one another in the event of an attack. As such, efforts of the ECOWAS to intervene in Niger’s coup have been halted, as both Burkina Faso and Mali have stated that an invasion would be a “declaration of war” against all three.
This article is particularly interesting, considering that I wrote about the Niger coup almost two weeks ago, demonstrating the sheer speed that things can change in the world. By uniting these three states, they declared their independence from the French influence that plagued their country for the past three centuries. It’s important to recognize that all three partook in coups resulting in French dismissal from their country. But, with their leaves, the countries must rebuild their economy on their own–something that’s difficult without aid from a first-world country. Thus, by forming this pact, they promise to aid each other in their economic development which should prove to be extremely beneficial considering the poverty levels for each country: Mali = 70%, Burkina Faso = 40%, and Niger = 41%. The rise of political organizations like these, also known as IGOs, demonstrates the unity that these African states are starting to have after many years of conflict amongst nations within a state. By economically uniting, they stand to have better trade relations with one another, thus boosting the economy. Similar to NATO, they’ve agreed that an attack on one is an attack on all, thus uniting their militaries against common enemies. Socially, the unity amongst the many peoples of each state could hint that the differences among each ethnicity aren’t a large part of being African anymore. While it occurred many years ago in a different part of Africa, the Rwandan genocide was one of the deadliest massacres based on ethnicity. Events like these must be prevented to the best of one’s abilities, and uniting as one could be a step to gaining all of Africa’s people to be “African” rather than their specific tribal name.
Another repercussion of colonialism was that borders weren’t redrawn according to the many different African tribes and ethnicities. In the three aforementioned countries, all of them bordering one another, the Fula tribe, a multi-state nation, consists of a large portion of each of their populations. As such, this could also be an attempt at uniting the many different people in Africa, but also at roping more countries into this union.