For as long as the field has existed, the consensus among scholars and political thinkers has been that regional integration requires democracy and democratic institutions. Public participation, mechanisms of accountability, democratic governance and independent institutions have essentially been thought of as the prerequisites for the long-term and predictable environment that is required for successful regional integration. The presence of these factors has been used to explain the unique success of the European Union, while the absence of these has been deemed as the primary reasons for the failure of other projects that sought to emulate the EU, such as ASEAN, the African Union and Mercosur.
In stark contrast to the decades-long consensus of what leads to successful and long-lasting regional integration is claimed to be the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – a union between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. All three states represent the polar opposite of the democracy driven regional integration model as they are dictatorships governed by military juntas; the primary backer of which is the Kremlin. Despite only being created in 2023, the Alliance of Sahel States has already claimed revolutionary progress in integration, alleging to have set up a central bank, common currency, unified trade policy, collective security and more. Its proponents maintain that all this was achieved not in spite of not having democracy, but because of it – authoritarianism claiming to be the main driver of regional integration, allowing for speedy and impactful decisions. It is therefore worthwhile to examine the validity of these claims, and whether authoritarianism could prove to be an effective driver of regional integration, or it is mainly a narrative formulated by autocrats to reinforce their grip on power.
The Creation of the Alliance of Sahel States
The Sahel is a region nestled between the Sahara desert and Sub-Saharan Africa, in a political context specifically referring to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. It is one of the most volatile and undercovered geopolitical hotspots in the world, with the global epicenter of terrorism, since 2019, having moved from the Middle East to the Sahel. It is no coincidence that the area with the most terrorist attacks anywhere in the world is the Liptako-Gourma triangle: a border area shared by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Additionally, since 2011, the three countries have been grappling with a decade-long insurgency with Islamist and separatist forces, posing a persistent, destabilizing threat.
It is in the face of this mounting insecurity that opportunistic elements in the militaries across the region seized the opportunity and overthrew civilian governments. The area came to be dubbed as the “Coup Belt”, as, since just 2020 alone, seven countries experienced coups and came under military dictatorships, including Burkina Faso (2022), Mali (2020) and Niger (2023). For decades, the primary security provider in the Sahel was the West, with aid from the United States and France being contingent on maintaining democracy and human rights. With the military juntas in power, Western support was driven out, and the regimes turned to Russia to provide support in consolidating their authoritarian rule.
Upon witnessing most of the Sahel fall to military dictatorships, in 2023, the regional African bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), decided to take action. Led by the region’s strongest state, Nigeria, ECOWAS threatened military intervention against the juntas in order to restore democracy and civilian rule. It is exactly at this time, when faced with the threat of a conventional war against West Africa’s strongest powers and still fighting the Islamic insurgency at home, that the military regimes of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger came together to create the Alliance of Sahel States.
Regional Integration under the Alliance of Sahel States
Initially having been founded as a security pact, AES has since evolved into a far more ambitious and multifaceted project. Formalized as a permanent union between the three members, the leaders of these states have declared four main pillars of integration within the alliance: collective security, economic integration, financial sovereignty, and cultural-educational identity.
Within the framework of the financial sovereignty pillar, it has been announced that the three countries will be establishing a monetary union by abandoning the CFA Franc, the currency used by most states in West Africa, and instead creating their own common Sahelian currency. To complement this, AES has declared plans to create a unified central bank for the three members – a system reminiscent of both the European Central Bank and the Euro, respectively.
In terms of economic integration, the alliance announced the creation of a joint Confederal Bank for Investment and Development (CBID), aiming to pool together resources for investment into infrastructure, agriculture and energy. At the same time, AES aims for a common market, with a declared “free movement of people, goods and capital” internally and a unified trade policy with states outside the bloc externally. An investment bank and the freedom of movement and common trade policy, similarly invoke projections of the European Investment Bank; the EU’s four freedoms and common market.
Regarding collective security, AES has formalized a mutual defense clause, providing protection from external threats by obliging each member to come to the aid of the other two in case of armed conflict. To deal with internal threats, the alliance declared the intention to create a joint force of 5,000 soldiers that would operate across national borders.
When it comes to the cultural-educational pillar, AES might be even more ambitious than the EU in its aspirations, announcing that it will seek to harmonize educational curricula across all three states and even link state-level, national narratives of the member countries.
Outcomes of Authoritarian Regional Integration
The breadth and scope of the initiatives heralded by the Alliance of Sahel States is impressive on paper. In only a few years, it claims to have made strides in integration that took the European Union decades. Its projects are alleged to combine the best aspects of the most successful regional organizations – the collective defense from NATO, and the common market, shared currency and unified trade policy from the EU. Proponents of AES claim it is specifically the authoritarian rule in the three member states that allowed them to make rapid and effective reforms.
Upon closer examination, however, this narrative proves to be a tool of the ruling military juntas, rather than a genuine example of successful regional integration. The vast majority of the flagship policies touted by AES only exist on paper and in speeches, with actual results never having materialized. The central bank, for example, was announced, but never manifested. Similarly, a common currency for the Sahel has seen no progress toward implementation. The investment bank has been established, but has nowhere near the required capital to fulfill the minimum function it was designed for. Likewise, a common market is fully absent and trade policy fragmented along national lines. The nominal cornerstone and original founding purpose of the alliance, security, is also largely fictional, as the declared 5,000 troop joint force does not exist and the mutual defense clause has never been tested in practice.
To conclude, while on paper it might be tempting to take the grandiose claims espoused by the leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States as evidence of authoritarian-led regional integration succeeding, a closer examination of real-world outcomes concludes that only democracies with established institutions have ever been able to produce long-term and lasting integration.
Andro Kvijinadze
- Andro Kvijinadze#molongui-disabled-link
