For more than two and half decades, precisely between 1985 and 2011, Mali experienced rapid economic growth. For instance, between 1985 and 1994, Mali’s GDP grew at an average rate of 1.7 per cent; 5.8 per cent between 1995 and 2005 and at 4.9 per cent between 2007 and 2010, while annual GDP growth was 2.7 per cent in 2011. On the one hand, this economic growth was occasioned by a flourishing democracy and socio-political stability, which made the country “an acclaimed example of democratic process in the West African sub-region.” On the other hand, flourishing democracy, socio-political stability and the resultant economic growth in Mali were results of the successes in regional integration recorded within the West African sub-region by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Following decades of instability arising from a series of political upheavals, sporadic violent social conflicts and civil wars in West Africa, the emphasis in the sub-region shifted in the mid-1990s, from economic cooperation to peace-building and security cooperation. This was due to the realisation that there is a dialectical relationship among security, peace, political stability, and economic growth and that economic cooperation cannot be fostered on a conflict-ridden environment. However, the flourishing democracy, socio-political stability and economic growth experienced in Mali in particular and the success in regional integration recorded by ECOWAS within the sub-region in general, have come under threats by the resurgence of political conflicts and secessionist tendencies in Mali, military coup d’état in Burkina Faso and electoral violence in Gabon, among others.
OGBONNAYA, Ufiem Maurice
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The purpose of this is paper is to contribute to the many endeavors to break the vicious circle of conflict, disease, poverty and the cycle of famine in Africa. It suggests that the continent make the best use of the very weakness of its state structures by re-conceptualizing a development whose sustainability is based on an integrated and collective management of river systems. To this end, one needs to rethink and reformulate issues that are creating conflict on the continent and redesign new forms of cooperation.
Hydropolitics and Geopolitics-Transforming Conflict and Reshaping Cooperation in Africa
Since the 1960s wave of African independence, whenever political arrangements fail to fulfill their intended purposes, the French response to deviant actors has resulted in over 100 French military interventions in Africa with stabilizing consequences in some cases and destabilizing outcomes in others. French logic for intervention has been two-fold: reactionary and preventive. The reactionary mode is to maintain the status quo with France as regional hegemon in sub-Saharan Africa and as major player in the global arena. The preventive mode is to deter competitors and outside threats to its national interests in the region. It is a model of an economy of forces whereby soft and hard power are combined and deployed to achieve results with maximum efficiency and minimum resources. More than half a century after independence, Francophone sub-Saharan Africa virtually functions as an extension of France’s national territory. This illustrates the fact that actual boundaries of nations depend less on physical size than on influence and the capacity of force projection. France’s role in world affairs
exemplifies this assertion.
The Economy of Forces-France in the Sahel and the Global Power Play
“Launched in February 2017, the G5 Sahel joint force is an experiment in a region crowded by sometimes-competing military and diplomatic initiatives. Weapons and money will not be enough to resolve the Sahel’s crises, so the force must win the trust and support of both local populations and regional powers.”
The international Crisis Group offers an insightful analysis of the G5 Sahel joint force (FC-G5S), as the new initiative undertaken by Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad is taking shape.
The full article can be accessed at:
Hi! I am Minna Salami, the founder of MsAfropolitan blog. I am a writer, blogger, columnist, speaker and lecturer. My work connects feminism with critical reflections on contemporary culture and intellectual thought from an Africa-centered perspective. On MsAfropolitan blog you can read posts about these topics and find out about upcoming events. I hope you enjoy your visit! I’m pleased to share the news that I have joined the Editorial Board of the Interdisciplinary Journal for the Studies of the Sahel, which is an initiative of The International Consortium for Geopolitical Studies of the Sahel – a collaborative international research team of experts focusing on the security, socio-political and ecological complex of the Sahel, of which I am also a member.
I know that many of you share the above concerns and I urge you to either contribute to the journal and/or share our Call for Papers. To read the full post or access the Call for Papers and the Authors’ Guidelines, please click on the links below.
Call for Papers-IJSS
Authors’ Guidelines-Harvard Style
The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Studies of the Sahel (a specialized section of Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies) is an on-line, open access, and peer reviewed scholarly journal devoted to research and analysis of policy, economic, social and political experiences of the Sahel region. The Journal is seeking submissions from all disciplinary fields of academic inquiry, including the arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM-related fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). To read more, please click on the links below.
Call for Papers-IJSS
Authors’ Guidelines-Harvard Style
This paper identifies the regional character of conflicts in the Sahel, the underlying causes, state and non-state actors and the need for a peacebuilding approach to conflict management in the region to be pursued by regional organizations.
The paper was co–presented by Professor Victor Adetula, Head of Research at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, and Dr. Maurice Ogbonnaya, Research Fellow at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Nigeria.
The “Policy Dialogue on Regional Economic Communities and Peacebuilding in the Maghreb, Sahel and Central Africa” was organized by the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council, New York; the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden; and the African Institute for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation, Rabat, Morocco, on September 28-29, 2017. To read more click on the link below:
Conflict in the Sahel. Analysis of Regional Context and Linkages
“As the Prime Minister of England, Lord Salisbury, expressed in his famous speech in the Albert Hall on May 4, 1898: ‘One can roughly divide the nations of the world into the living and the dying.”
It was an image that came frighteningly close to reality. The weak nations become increasingly weaker and the strong stronger, Salisbury went on. It was in the nature of things that “living nations will fraudulently encroach on the territory of the dying.”
“You already know enough. So, do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions”.
Quotations from Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes, 1997).
With The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Studies of the Sahel, what we offer to the readers is to deconstruct what has been constructed and re-frame the rhetoric about the Sahel region.
Vision and Mission Statements
Given that the securitization of Africa’s space and population is mainly based on the perception and perspective of the West, we need to re-frame the rhetoric about the Sahel. That is the rationale for the International Consortium for Geopolitical Studies of the Sahel (the Sahel Consortium) to launch the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Sahel. The journal will promote and make available to the public, scholars and policy makers, the findings of practical and theoretical studies by combining many disciplines and balancing perspectives from inside and outside the region.
Announcing the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Sahel