By Lucy Adautin
According to the Malian foreign ministry, ministers from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic intend to move forward with the creation of a confederation.
This was made know on Thursday.
As the three countries deepen their ties through an alliance, it poses a challenge to broader West African integration.
The recent meeting follows closely after the announcement in January 2024 by the neighboring countries in the impoverished Sahel region of their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The bloc has urged them to reconsider this decision, cautioning about the additional hardships that such a withdrawal would entail.
All three were founding members of the regional bloc in 1975 but had been suspended following military coups that overthrew elected civilian governments.
Burkina’s Defence Minister General Kassoum Coulibaly said the talks in Ouagadougou were an opportunity to pursue the implementation of “instruments, mechanisms and procedures” and the “legal architecture for the confederation” as quoted by Reuters.
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The procedures will “allow our alliance and the confederation to function efficiently and to the great joy” of the three countries’ populations, his Niger counterpart General Salifou Modi said.
Last November, their finance ministers said they would weigh the option of setting up a monetary union and top officials from all three countries have, to varying degrees, voiced support for abandoning West Africa’s CFA franc common currency.
The juntas have all severed long-standing military ties with former colonial ruler France, dealing a blow to France’s influence in the Sahel and complicating international efforts to fight the militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
