Disorder from Chaos: Why Europeans fail to promote stability in the Sahel

The activities of the Sahel Alliance since its formation demonstrate some of the wide-ranging ambitions for European and international policy in the region. But the Alliance has also revealed the difficulties facing efforts to coordinate ongoing work and make existing and future policies more effective. Confusion surrounding European programmes and international strategies in the Sahel has been made all the more serious by the worsening security situation there.

In his new policy brief, ECFR policy fellow Andrew Lebovich analyses the Sahel Alliance and the way in which it has developed since it was founded, paying particular attention to how its approach and practices have evolved. It also examines shortcomings in the Alliance’s approaches – particularly those related to governance, which remain important to ongoing events such as Mali’s coup.

The main findings are:

• France, Germany, and Sahel countries launched the Sahel Alliance in 2017 with the aim of bringing together major international donors to better coordinate development assistance and other financing efforts for the region.
   
• The Alliance aimed to integrate security, development, and governance perspectives but has struggled to find coherence and effectiveness – although it has adopted some novel approaches.
   
• The worsening security situation in the Sahel led international actors to then set up new initiatives, including the Partnership for Security and Stability in the Sahel and, more recently, the Coalition for the Sahel. However, the relationship between these initiatives remains largely theoretical, with the practicalities of cooperation and burden sharing yet to be fully defined.
   
• These new initiatives risk privileging security solutions to complex problems, meaning that necessary governance reforms may fall by the wayside. This is despite widespread acknowledgement, including from senior French officials, that there is no purely military solution.

European and international partners should consider the following:

• Within the mutual accountability framework of the Sahel Alliance, apply funding pressure to ensure that improvements in civilian protection and key governance benchmarks are made.
   
• Ensure that coordination mechanisms like the Coalition for the Sahel Secretariat have real  authority. While over-institutionalisation of coordinating mechanisms is a risk, these efforts must be genuinely multilateral and sufficiently staffed and funded to have the impact they are intended to have.
   
• Expand multilateral training missions where governing conditions allow, but also make sure that contributors can accompany troops into the field. This would clarify some of the ambiguity that exists in the language of current mandates.
   
• Seriously consider designating individuals for sanctions for impeding progress in the implementation of the peace process. Government officials should also be eligible for sanctions.   

About the author:
Andrew Lebovich is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on North Africa and the Sahel. Lebovich is currently a doctoral candidate in African History at Columbia University in New York, where he studies religion, politics, and society in North Africa, the Sahara, and the Sahel. He previously worked for the Open Society Initiative in West Africa (OSIWA) as a Sahel consultant, advising the organisation on political, social, and security issues in West Africa and the Sahel, and for the New America Foundation. He has lived and conducted field and archival research in France, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Mali, and Niger.