While nations still vie for Africa’s vast resource wealth for their own survival as powers in the current century, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—a bloc of African nations consisting of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger—continues taking bold and deliberate steps toward uncompromised sovereignty and regional self-determination.
Since uniting as a bloc in 2023, the alliance made significant strides to sever the yoke of foreign domination of their countries. Africa watchers say the AES is not pushing symbolic change, but full and complete freedom.
Worldwide, the alliance has become a beacon light of confidence that Africa will exist for Africans and her diaspora. However, full and complete freedom is only meaningful if the entire continent is fully free. It’s interconnected, observers and analysts note.
“The independence of the alliance is meaningless unless it’s linked to the independence of all of Africa,” said Musaka Dada, also known as, Willie Ricks, longtime Pan African activist and organizer.
Mr. Dada had recently returned from a visit to Burkina Faso. Although the 3 nation alliance has liberated territory, “they’re still under attack by imperialism,” he told The Final Call.
“And so, we have to continue to fight … liberate the Congo … the rest of Africa … build a link with African people worldwide,” said Mr. Dada, adding, “in order for the alliance to work like it’s going to have to work,”
As nations contend for the resource wealth of Africa to survive as powers in the current century, there is a wave of anti-West, anti-French sentiment in the Sahel region. The AES nations expelled French troops, rejected U.S. military presence, and have aligned closer to Russia.
One of the major steps implemented this year by the alliance is a 5,000‑strong joint military force established for regional security. However, more is needed by way of continental unity, say observers.
With more than 2 dozen U.S. AFRICOM military sites spread across the continent, alongside numerous foreign military bases and African states aligned with Western military powers, the AES remains vulnerable to external interference.
Despite their push for sovereignty, the region is encircled by forces invested in maintaining influence over Africa’s security, resources, and political direction.
AES leaders, Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso; General Assimi Goïta, Interim President of Mali, and General Abdourahamane Tchiani, of Niger are reminders of past visionary leaders of Africa like Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Sekou Toure (Guinea-Conakry) and later Muammar Gadhafi (Libya) and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) to name a few.
So far, the AES challenged and fractured the grip that France, their former colonial ruler had maintained on its former colonies, long after formal independence.
France kept a stranglehold through its “francafrique” policy that touted “political, economic, military, and cultural” cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa. In practice, however, critics argue the policy was a neocolonial system of exploitation, corruption, and control.
The AES is systematically unraveling the web of dependency and foreign control that has persisted in the subsequent decades. From reclaiming natural resources and rewriting constitutions, to renouncing French as the official language and exiting France-led institutions like La Francophonie, the alliance is pronouncing a new paradigm of sovereignty beyond symbolism, but structural, economic, cultural, and fully African.
In May the AES announced a step toward economic sovereignty with the creation of the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development. The bank will fund infrastructure and strategic sectors and mobilize regional resources free from foreign control and dependence on institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and France-linked banks.
The move has the potential for an independent currency breaking from the CFA franc, the French colonial-era currency still imposed on 14 African countries.
Other moves were instituting a Sahel-wide passport to be distributed to the citizens of the three countries. The common passport tightens regional integration and asserts a unified identity.
For Mr. Dada, when asked if the AES is a paradigm for the continent of 1.5 billion people, the longtime organizer was unequivocal.
“If you mean by paradigm, it means should we run the neo-colonialists out of Africa? Should we overthrow all those governments and stop our diamonds and gold and natural resource from going to Europe and other forces outside of Africa? Should we build the United States of Africa? Yes,” said Mr. Dada. Africa must be put back together, he continued.
“They cut Africa up in little pieces, and Africa can’t find its real personality until we bring all that back together as one,” he explained. “All of those forces that operate and cooperate with the imperialists, they definitely have to be stopped by any means necessary,” said Mr. Dada.
—Brian E. Muhammad, Staff Writer