AES Bloc’s New Sovereignty Push on Energy and Mining Challenges Western Leverage in the Sahel
Leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States—Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger—are using their first joint meeting on energy, mines and petroleum to declare an “irreversible” choice for sovereignty over their resources. The stance signals a harder break with Western partners and a turn toward self-defined development models in a region already scarred by coups, sanctions and insurgency.
West Africa’s new military-led Alliance of Sahel States is moving from rhetoric to policy in its bid to redefine who profits from the region’s minerals and energy. At their first joint meeting of energy, mining and petroleum ministers in Ouagadougou, leaders from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger framed control over natural resources as an “irreversible” choice for sovereignty, rejecting what they called decades of plunder in favor of serving “primarily the interests” of their own populations. Burkina Faso’s Prime Minister Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo used stark language on 16 August, telling delegates that people in the AES bloc have decisively turned away from an economic model he described as extractive and…
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