West Africa Needs Regional Solutions To Combat Escalating Sahel Security Crisis

• A military takeover in Guinea-Bissau and an attempted coup in Benin are the latest tests for ECOWAS. But it is the ever-spreading Sahel security crisis that remains the greater challenge for regional leadership

On 7 December, troops led by a special forces commander attempted to take power in Benin. The thwarted coup came less than two weeks after soldiers had seized power in the fellow West African country of Guinea-Bissau following its presidential election.

Loyalist forces quickly recovered full control in Benin, with air support and troops from fellow member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deployed to consolidate government authority. 

Meanwhile in Guinea-Bissau, which has historically suffered from chronic instability, ECOWAS is engaged in delicate negotiations to navigate a way out of the latest upheaval while the country has been suspended from the bloc’s decision-making bodies. 

ECOWAS has plenty of experience using diplomacy and political compromise to deal with awkward but contained national crises such as the coup in Guinea-Bissau. Benin’s case was more surprising, as the country had not seen a coup attempt in fifty years. 

But both events are placing additional demands on ECOWAS as West Africa continues to confront a far larger crisis: the seemingly relentless spread of violence across the Sahel and into the northern reaches of coastal states. 

With the security of the entire region now at risk, there is pressure for governments to set aside their differences and forge a coordinated response to the increasingly sophisticated terrorist threat. 

For more than a decade, the central Sahelian states – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – have been enveloped by a security crisis, with jihadist attacks on government forces and civilians overlapping with criminal trafficking and inter-communal tensions over land and other key natural resources.

The crisis reached new depths in early September, when the jihadist fighters of Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) imposed a blockade on key fuel supply routes to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Through repeated attacks on vehicles supplying fuel to the landlocked country, the militants have come close to suffocating the Malian economy and destabilized its southern and western regions that were previously relatively unscathed. 

It is unlikely that the militants have the ambition or the capacity to attempt a takeover of Bamako or the Malian state. But the destabilizing pressure remains; despite attacks on fuel convoys briefly receding at the end of November, they resumed on 6 December with at least 15 trucks burnt in southern Mali. 

Expanding insecurity

In recent years, the crisis in the central Sahel has increasingly spilled over into northern Benin, Togo and Nigeria. 

Togo and Benin have suffered repeated direct jihadist attacks. In Nigeria, the long-running threat from Boko Haram and Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the north-east has now been compounded by an upsurge in violent banditry and militant activity in the north-west, with particularly difficult conditions in Zamfara state.

In Benin, the coup plotters justified their attempted takeover by citing the deteriorating security situation and the deaths of soldiers in recent attacks. This shows how these factors can fuel grievances among sectors of the military, even in a stable nation where the main drivers of political dispute and popular complaint have been constitutional and electoral wrangles and the role of vested economic interests.  Related work Navigating a path beyond regional division is essential for West Africa’s security

ECOWAS mediation and military intervention may be able to defuse the crises in Benin and Guinea-Bissau in the short term. However, containing the multiple impacts of the security crisis in the Sahel represents a much greater and, indeed, existential challenge for the region.

This challenge is made more difficult due to the wave of military coups that overturned elected civilian governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger between 2020 and 2023. The military juntas in the three countries have since had strained relations with many of the coastal ECOWAS nations. In January 2025, the three countries withdrew from ECOWAS and focused on building up the capacities of their own grouping, Alliance des États du Sahel (AES). 

With the security of the entire region now at risk, there is pressure for governments to set aside their differences and forge a coordinated response to the increasingly sophisticated terrorist threat. 

Long-term solutions needed

Africa Corps, the Russian paramilitary group which replaced the Wagner Group in Mali in June, reportedly recently escorted a fuel convoy from Niger to Bamako alongside the Malian armed forces. Moscow has pledged to support Bamako with fuel and agricultural supplies to soften the economic blow of the JNIM blockade.

But this offered only a brief respite rather than a comprehensive solution to the crisis, which requires a significant improvement in bilateral and regional relations.

Many policymakers in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, two of the most influential actors in the region, believe that effective responses to the security crisis must go beyond purely military action.

French forces operating in the Sahel until 2023 were highly effective in targeting key militant leaders, and the current Sahelian regimes regularly proclaim they have ‘neutralized’ groups of militants. But these forceful tactics have also failed to stem the continuing spread of militancy. 

Stemming the steady trickle of recruits to jihadist factions requires both an effective security response and sustained measures to tackle underlying socio-economic grievances and frustrations.

JNIM has sought to encourage opposition to foreign companies, which it describes as ‘economic colonizers’ in its propaganda videos. The militants have targeted gold and lithium mining sites and kidnapped various foreign nationals. The Malian junta has so far failed to effectively deal with this tactic, which has enabled JNIM to extract ransom payments while simultaneously accusing the government of prioritizing captured foreign nationals over ordinary citizens.

Regional relations reset 

Formulating a new ECOWAS-AES response to the multi-faceted regional security crisis remains the overarching challenge in West Africa. 

Some progress has already occurred at the bilateral level. Examples include Mali and Senegal military cooperation, joint security initiatives between Burkina Faso and Ghana, and tentative signs of a rapprochement between Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. Despite their mutual distrust since Niger’s July 2023 coup, Nigeria’s decisive help during Niger’s fuel crisis in March shows recognition of the need for collaboration.

The ongoing accumulation of crises may offer a chance to recalibrate ECOWAS-AES relations, reminding both blocs of their intertwined destinies.

ECOWAS and the AES already appear to be edging towards an understanding on some form of open framework for the free-flowing trade, travel and migration that are fundamental to West African life. Informal intelligence exchanges between border-area military units are also believed to have persisted to some extent, despite high-level bilateral tensions. But without rebuilding formal operational connections, limited security cooperation will remain insufficient to tackle the extent of the threat.

A coordinated response will mean overcoming the deep anger from years of political confrontation triggered by the Sahelian coups of 2020-23. The level of mistrust was illustrated in recent days when Burkina Faso accused a Nigerian military transport plane of infringing its airspace after it made an unscheduled landing at a Burkinabè airport for safety reasons. 

Reaching agreement on operating guidelines is also unlikely to be easy. It is vital that any joint security operation complies with the rules of war and avoids taking any punitive approaches that risk inadvertently fuelling jihadist recruitment.

In rebuilding a collaborative approach, the broad West African region can draw on its shared sense of identity, practical experience in managing challenges and political culture of cooperation developed over more than three decades. The ongoing accumulation of crises may therefore offer a chance to recalibrate ECOWAS-AES relations, reminding both blocs of their intertwined destinies.

@Chatham House, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/12/west-africa-needs-regional-solutions-combat-escalating-sahel-security-crisis?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=west-africa&utm_content=sahel