The Sahel Region Is Less Secure Than Ever: Foreign Forces Just Add To The Cycle Of Violence

French soldiers on patrol in Diabaly, Mali, 2013. Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images

BY NINA LILEN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,

LUND UNIVERSITY

Several of Mali’s major cities experienced coordinated attacks in April by a new coalition of jihadists and separatist groups.

As the coalition took over the town of Kidal in the north of Mali, images of Russian troops being escorted out of the town after negotiations were cabled out across global media.

Russia, now in the shape of Africa Corps and previously the Wagner Group, has been the Malian military’s external security partner since the beginning of 2022. It replaced French and European troops from the counter-terrorism operation Barkhane and Taskforce Takuba. France had deployed a force of 5,000 troops from 2014 to 2022. European special forces numbered 1,000 between 2020 and 2022. Both missions were forced to leave as relations between France and the Malian junta grew tense.

The strategic realignment, from western and multilateral forces to Russian troops, expanded in the region. In Burkina Faso, which experienced two coups in 2022, the French troops were expelled at the start of 2023, as 200 Russian troops moved in.

In the summer of 2023, the Malian authorities also kicked out the decade-old 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission. Niger’s junta, which took power the same year, followed suit and expelled the EU’s operations in the country six months later, before accepting a few hundred Russian troops.

During the past decade I have researched external security interventions in the Sahel and analysed their justifications, development on the ground, and consequences for political and security environments.

I conclude from my research that the external interventions have not stabilised the region. More than a decade after the first major interventions, the Sahel is more fragmented, militarised and violent than before.

Yet the persistence of insecurity also serves political purposes.

For military juntas, the jihadist threat justifies continued rule and repression. For Russia, the region has become a showcase for anti-western influence and security partnerships in Africa. For western actors, jihadist expansion, migration concerns and fears of regional instability are used as reasons for security engagement despite repeated failures.

The complex interactions between these actors have resulted in a continuous, strategic circle of violence, where civilians are the first victims.

On the ground

On the ground, interventions have often evolved in unpredictable ways through ad hoc decisions and informal interactions between local and external actors.

For example, they have shared logistical and medical assistance and intelligence.

More broadly, the external interventions strengthened militaries as political actors, reinforcing an already biased civil-military balance across the region.

“Security in the Sahel” became the moniker that framed the western and multilateral interventions in the region from 2013 onwards. Improving the capacities, capabilities and professionalism of the national security forces became the official objectives of these interventions, closely linked to the broader aim of defeating the jihadist insurgencies.

Framing the intersecting crises in the Sahel as a security issue also meant that security actors had the task of resolving it. The importance, status and budgets of the national militaries thus increased as the security situation deteriorated. A heavily tilted civil-military imbalance was the result.

As military officers took over power through coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, a strategic realignment towards Russia began, to maintain military rule.

The Russian Wagner group allowed the newly installed juntas to entrench their power, while “deprofessionalising” the forces through harassment, attacks and massacres of civilians.

Research shows for example that civilian targeting accounted for 71% of the Wagner Group’s involvement in political violence in Mali between December 2021 and July 2022. This strategy of attacking civilians has made recruitment easier for jihadist groups. They could increase their ranks by exploiting grievances.

The latest attacks in Mali in April 2026 demonstrate the military junta’s failure, together with its Russian security partners, to contain the jihadist groups’ expansion.

They also reveal that Russia is in the country mainly to keep the military junta in power. Assimi Goïta, Mali’s military leader, reconfirmed the partnership with Russia after the attacks in spite of their failure on the battlefield.

The military leader needs regime maintenance more than ever, and the Russians need to be in the country for continued geopolitical influence on the African continent.

Conclusion

The result is that while all external actors claim to fight instability, the current regional order depends on continuing insecurity.

Stabilisation risks becoming less about resolving conflict than about managing insecurity in ways that sustain regimes, partnerships and geopolitical influence.

Foreign interventions, in combination with national actors’ ambitions, have helped to transform the region into a space of militarised regime survival, jihadist expansion and geopolitical competition between Russia and western democracies.

As military approaches have repeatedly proven insufficient to solve the intersecting crises in the Sahel, pressured military juntas may now be forced to negotiate with jihadist groups. That is likely to result in new, hybrid spaces of power and governance.

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Mali’s Security Crisis Holds Warnings For Nigeria: Here’s Why

Nigerian soldiers prepare to patrol in Maiduguri. Audu Marte/AFP via Getty Images

BY SAHEED BABAJIDE OWONIKOKO

RESEARCHER, CENTER FOR PEACE AND

SECURITY STUDIES, MODDIBO ADAMA

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, YOLA

Mali and Nigeria, two of the countries in the Sahel region of west Africa, are separated by approximately 1,000 kilometres, with the Niger Republic between them. They differ in population size and government, but they face some of the same threats.

Mali has a population of about 22.4 million, while Nigeria has about 223.8 million. While Nigeria has been a democracy since 1999, Mali has had a military government since 2020.

The two are similar in that they are threatened by multiple armed groups operating in their territories.

Three armed groups – Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP/ISGS), Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) – are shaping the conflict in Mali.

This reached a new high in April 2026 when Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin and the Azawad Liberation Front carried out coordinated attacks across Mali.

The northern cities of Kidal and Mopti, as well as military bases in Sevare and Gao, were captured. The heart of Bamako, the capital city of Mali, was also struck, leading to the death of the defence minister, Sadio Camara.

Nigeria too has been threatened by jihadist insurgence and banditry in the north as well as secessionists and militancy in the south. Jama’at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da’wa wa al-Jihad (JAS) and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are active in the north.

Nigeria lost two brigadier generals fighting the insurgents in the north-east between November 2025 and April 2026.

The weakness of the state plays a significant role in the vulnerability of both countries to attacks. As a scholar who has followed the unfolding events in the Sahel, I draw lessons for Nigeria from the April attacks in Mali.

Those lessons include the possibility of alignment among armed groups, the danger of the jihadists advancing to other Sahelian countries, the audacity of the groups, and the possibility that gains of JNIM in Mali could incite rival groups in Nigeria.

Key lessons for Nigeria

The first lesson concerns armed groups teaming up to fight the state. The April attackers were a combined force of FLA and JNIM. These groups share a common aim: securing enclaves within Mali. They joined efforts to carry out the attacks, each focusing on the areas they wished to control.

In the same vein, Nigeria has battled many armed groups. Competition, rather than cooperation, has defined the relationship between these groups, especially in northern Nigeria. This has always been to the advantage of the Nigerian state. The erstwhile charismatic leader of terror group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, survived for more than a decade but died during clashes between his group, JAS and ISWAP members.

This led to a decline in Boko Haram’s activities, although they are now gradually resurging.

However, there is evidence of an unfolding alliance between terrorists in the north-east and bandits in the north-central and north-west areas of Nigeria. Such alliance have often been in terms of tactical cooperation as well as exchange of members and arms.

There is also a possibility of closing ranks and joining forces between Boko Haram and ISWAP, especially if leaders who favour working together with ISWAP take over Boko Haram from Bakura Doro, the current leader of JAS, after the death of Abukakar Shekau. If this happens, it may escalate terrorist activities that may be difficult for Nigeria to manage.

The second lesson is that the audacity of the JNIM/FLA coalition and the results achieved can motivate related groups to act in other parts of the Sahel. The al-Qaeda-linked and ISIS-linked terrorist groups have been involved in a competition for control of the Sahel for a long period.

This comes in the form of direct armed attacks against each other, competition over territory and recruiting, and attempting to demonstrate the ability to cause more violence than the other. This has led to an increase in jihadist attacks.

JNIM’s takeover of some cities in Mali may encourage its ISIS-affiliated rivals in the Greater Sahara and Lake Chad to also increase their violence.

In the Lake Chad Region, ISWAP has intensified attacks against military formations while also building parallel states in many areas of the Lake Chad basin, with Nigeria being the most affected.

Lastly, with the capture of Kidal and attacks near Bamako, JNIM may be close to capturing Mali. If Mali falls, it could be a training ground for terrorists in the Sahel. This fear was the reason Nigeria mobilised its forces for a peacekeeping mission in Mali in 2012. And if Mali falls, Burkina Faso and Niger will be threatened.

The threat to Niger is a significant problem because it is a buffer zone for Nigeria. Meanwhile Nigeria is a major target of the jihadist insurgents in their move to extend towards coastal west Africa.

What should Nigeria do?

Mali’s experience could turn the lens on Nigeria. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have opted out of the Economic Community of West African States, Ecowas. But Nigeria and other countries in the region should not abandon the breakaway states at this stage. Necessary regional support should be galvanised and Nigeria can still play a leading role in this.

In my view, Nigeria also needs to rejig its counter-terrorism to be more responsive. Rather than its current defensive posture, which gives jihadists the opportunity to plan, Nigeria ought to adopt sophisticated and strategic offensive counter-terrorism that takes the war to the jihadists.

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Mali’s Armed Groups Fill A Government Vacuum – Addressing This Is Key To Ending The Violence

BY NORMAN SEMPIJJA AND MUHAMMED NDIAYE

Mali has been in a state of political turmoil since 2012. That year saw a military coup as well as armed groups taking over northern regions of the west African country. In the intervening years, efforts at establishing transitional governments have failed, culminating in the military junta dissolving and banning all political parties in May 2025.

In addition, the country has seen waves of military interventions by outside players like France, the US and most recently Russia. All have invested heavily in trying to contain the extremist threat in Mali.

But groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have continued to expand their influence. And in late April 2026 the military government found itself having to fend off coordinated attacks from separatists and jihadists across the country. The defence minister, General Sadio Camara, was killed.

Foreign interventions over the past decade have often misunderstood what was happening on the ground. Extremist groups have capitalised on issues such as land disputes, corruption, and resource competition to gain legitimacy, often aligning with the community’s tensions. The weakness of state institutions and security forces has allowed groups such as Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) to consolidate power.

These groups have adapted by forming alliances and tailoring their narratives to local grievances, prioritising immediate issues over ideological objectives.

We are political scientists who have researched the security situation in Mali and the Sahel. Our recently published paper showed that non-state armed groups in the Sahel, particularly in Mali, have emerged as key power brokers, shaping local governance by filling gaps left by weak state institutions.

While external actors such as France, the US and Russia have prioritised counter-terrorism and state-building, they often overlook the governance functions of non-state armed groups. These groups often provide essential services and gain local legitimacy.

Recognising the role of armed groups as local power holders does not mean accepting or legitimising their actions. However, ignoring this reality has led to policies that miss the mark. When interventions focus only on military solutions, they risk misunderstanding why people interact with these groups in the first place.

Our findings challenge conventional interventions that focus solely on defeating non-state armed groups or reinstating centralised state control. We argue that security solutions alone are insufficient. We advocate for a more nuanced approach that integrates the potential for non-state armed groups when it comes to governance, legitimacy and local agency. Non-state armed groups have provided governance over territories in countries like Colombia, Syria and South Sudan, among others.

Armed groups as de facto authorities

Armed groups in Mali are not just fighting forces. In many parts of the country, they play a more complex role. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of groups operating within Mali. The largest and best known, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, is a coalition of five organisations and claims to have over 10,000 fighters in the country.

In central and northern Mali, bordering Algeria, the state is often distant, absent or mistrusted. Armed groups step into this vacuum. They settle disputes, enforce rules, collect taxes, and sometimes provide a basic sense of order.

For communities living with daily insecurity, these functions are not abstract; they shape everyday life.

Our study established that this does not necessarily mean the population agrees with these groups or supports their ideology. Many do not. However, when there are few alternatives, people adapt. They follow the rules because they need to survive, not because they believe in them.

This distinction is important. This helps explain why these groups are so difficult to dislodge. Their strength does not come only from weapons but also from how deeply they are embedded in local realities.

Why military strategies fall short

International efforts have largely focused on fighting these groups and rebuilding the authority of the Malian state. Although well intentioned, these kinds of interventions often overlook something essential: what happens to the spaces these groups leave behind?

An example is France’s 2013 intervention. The French army helped the Malian army to regain control of the northern part of the country from advancing Islamists during Operation Serval. The aim was to stop extremist forces from advancing to Bamako. This did not end the conflict. Many fighters moved to rural areas where the state had little presence and built ties with local communities.

In central Mali, where cattle farming is a key source of income, this dynamic contributed to the spread of violence between Fulani and Dogon communities, reinforcing grievances exploited by extremist groups.

Simultaneously, attempts to strengthen state institutions have struggled. In some places, security forces are seen as ineffective and even abusive.

Faced with this reality, people often turn to whoever can offer some level of predictability and protection, even if that actor is an armed group.

External involvement has also become increasingly fragmented. France’s withdrawal, rising anti-western sentiment, and the arrival of Russian-linked forces have created a crowded and sometimes conflicting intervention landscape.

Different actors bring different agendas, and their presence does not always translate into greater security. In some cases, it can even worsen things by reinforcing tensions or weakening trust in already fragile institutions.

Caught in the middle, civilians make difficult choices daily. Their decisions are rarely ideological but rather about survival.

Rethinking the response

We conclude from our findings that a more grounded approach would begin by listening to local realities. It would address the gaps that allow armed groups to take root. This means improving access to justice and security, supporting local institutions, and taking grievances seriously. It also means recognising that legitimacy is built from the ground up, not imposed from above.

Mali’s experience shows that there are clear limits to what military force can achieve on its own. As long as interventions overlook the everyday realities of governance and survival, they are unlikely to bring about lasting change. Until that shift happens, armed groups will remain hard to dislodge, not only because they can fight but also because, in many places, they have become part of how life is organised.

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Militarising The Sahel Will Not Defeat Terrorism

BY AYODELE S. OWOLABI

ASSOCIATE LECTURER  IN INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS, AT LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES

UNIVERSITY

After launching what he called “a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS [ISIL] terrorist scum” in northwest Nigeria on December 25, United States President Donald Trump promised “many more”, reaffirming his stance that the US “will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper”. The strikes occurred less than a week after the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES) commissioned a joint military force comprising a 5,000-strong contingent, presented as a symbol of collective self-reliance and security autonomy, in a concerted effort to combat terrorist groups in its member states. They also followed moves by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to establish an ambitious plan announced in August 2025 to activate a 260,000-strong joint counterterrorism force, backed by a proposed $2.5bn annual budget for logistics and front-line support.

While these developments may be presented by their proponents as decisive steps against terrorism, there is little evidence that militarised escalation alone can defeat armed groups in the Sahel. Instead, they signal an accelerating militarisation of the region. Not only does this fuel emerging geopolitical tensions in West Africa, but it also, more importantly, edges the Sahel towards interstate armed conflict, posing far graver risks to regional peace and stability.

A friendship turned sour

Until 2021, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations in the Sahel were governed by a loosely coordinated, non-hierarchical security architecture built around diplomatic and military collaboration among regional and extra-regional actors. This architecture brought together ECOWAS, the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union, external powers such as the US and France, as well as regional powers such as Algeria and Nigeria, with ECOWAS playing a central coordinating role.

A typical example was the 2013 African-led International Support Mission to Mali, organised by ECOWAS in collaboration with the AU, UN and France to confront Tuareg rebels and allied armed groups in northern Mali. More prominent was the EU-financed G5 Sahel counterterrorism force, which brought together African and European troops and operated between 2017 and 2023. While these arrangements were often marked by tension, competition and uneven outcomes, they functioned within a shared security framework that limited direct confrontation between states.

This balance was disrupted after the 2023 coup in Niger. By threatening the use of force to restore constitutional order, ECOWAS crossed a political threshold that transformed its role from intermediary to perceived adversary in the eyes of the Nigerien junta. That threat was widely interpreted as an act of aggression, and it proved catalytic. In response, Niger’s military rulers, alongside their counterparts in Mali and Burkina Faso, moved to establish the Alliance of Sahel States as a deliberate effort to reclaim security autonomy, dismantle the existing multilateral security regime and sever ties with longstanding partners including ECOWAS, the EU, the US and France.

Notably, the AES institutionalises a mutual defence pact that codifies this break with the previous multilateral security order by explicitly framing ECOWAS and its Western partners as threats to the sovereignty and national security of its member states. Beyond deepening the rift between former allies, this posture signals a dangerous shift towards the securitisation of neighbouring states, raising the spectre of interstate conflict in West Africa, a phenomenon largely absent since the 1990s.

Emerging geopolitical tensions

In severing security ties with the West, the AES have pivoted towards Russia as a principal security partner to counterbalance decades of US and European influence in West Africa, signalling a deepening but still evolving security partnership with Moscow. While these strategic choices reflect an emerging self-help posture with new preferences for non-conventional allies, they are also intensifying geopolitical tensions across the region.

Nigeria’s military role in countering an attempted coup in neighbouring Benin was praised as a major win for ECOWAS. But when a Nigerian Air Force C-130 aircraft made an emergency landing in Burkina Faso two days later, the AES interpreted this as a violation of its airspace and sovereignty, authorising its air force to neutralise any aircraft involved in further violations. Tensions were heightened by reports that France had provided Nigeria with surveillance and intelligence support during the Benin intervention, fuelling apprehension about France’s potential re-entry into the AES security landscape. With Nigeria now willing to extend security cooperation with the US following the Christmas Day strikes, the stakes have risen further for the AES. Although aimed at militants operating in northwest Nigeria, the strikes appear calculated to bolster US strategic legitimacy as a counterterrorism actor in the region, potentially opening the door to further operations in Nigeria’s northeast, where ISWAP and Boko Haram remain active.

Given Nigeria’s influence within ECOWAS, this emerging security partnership with the US is likely to shape the operational capacity of the proposed 260,000-strong ECOWAS force. This does not bode well for the AES, which is intent on insulating its member states from Western security influence in the name of sovereignty. Because ECOWAS forces would be deployed in member states at the epicentre of terrorist violence, many combat engagements would take place in locations adjacent to AES territories. With AES troops also operating in these areas, military clashes between the two sides become increasingly likely, particularly given the region’s porous borders and fluid combat environments. Given that the Christmas Day strikes reportedly hit unintended targets, the risk that future air strikes by a US-backed ECOWAS could spill into AES territory cannot be dismissed. For deterrence, the AES may seek to leverage Russia’s military backing, evoking echoes of Cold War-era security brinkmanship.

Implications for regional stability

Without reconciliation between the AES and ECOWAS, two major risks loom for regional peace and stability. First, rising geopolitical tensions could draw AES and ECOWAS member states into direct interstate military confrontations, potentially plunging West Africa into a regional war. Such a conflict would serve neither side’s counterterrorism objectives. Beyond devastating the region, it would create space for armed groups to expand their operations amid fractured and distracted security responses. Second, the standoff risks turning West Africa into a new theatre for global power rivalry, with a Russia-backed AES on one side and a US and France-backed ECOWAS on the other. In the context of an emerging New Cold War, the use of veto power by these global actors at the UN Security Council could further complicate conflict resolution, with profoundly destabilising consequences for the region.

The AES and ECOWAS now face a stark choice: to revive Cold War-style bloc politics in West Africa while the region slides towards chaos, or to negotiate a security sub-coalition that prioritises human security alongside national sovereignty. Regardless of how the AES views ECOWAS, the burden lies with the latter to manage the unintended consequences of escalating tensions. While there are few indications that the AES is willing to cooperate directly with a West-backed ECOWAS on counterterrorism, ECOWAS could pursue diplomatic engagement to negotiate a concept of operations that guarantees respect for AES sovereignty. As Africa’s most experienced regional security organisation, ECOWAS possesses the diplomatic capacity to do so. For progress to be made, Francophone ECOWAS member states should take the lead in these efforts, while Nigeria exercises its influence more discreetly. Whether ECOWAS can reclaim ownership of its security agenda and define the terms of external engagement will shape not only West Africa’s future, but that of the continent as a whole.

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The US’ West Africa And Sahel Challenge

 

BY LIAM KARR

Washington needs to counter Russian propaganda in the region, and highlight that a US partnership is a win-win for the Sahel and West Africa.

The Trump administration’s push for greater US engagement with West Africa is a smart move. The region is a focal point for geopolitical competition with China and Russia, counterterrorism efforts that bolster US security, and business potential for American investors.

However, the United States will face obstacles from within and without as it works to grow partnerships in the Gulf of Guinea, which lies along Africa’s western coast, and the Sahel, which includes neighboring landlocked countries in the lower reaches of the Sahara Desert. American officials should develop a framework that balances competing US priorities on defense, democracy, human rights, and immigration with the needs of regional partners.

To address counterterrorism interests, US officials have traveled to the Sahel to re-engage with the Alliance of Sahel States, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. In this region, defense is a top priority, as the United States and African partners seek to degrade rapidly strengthening Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. American military officials describe the Sahel as the “epicenter” of global terrorism and warn that these groups could develop the ability to attack the US homeland.

The military juntas that control the three countries distanced themselves from the West after taking power and turned to Russia for support. Niger’s junta kicked out 1,000 US troops who were helping fight the terror groups and assumed control over a $110 million US-built drone base in 2024. Russian private military corporation Wagner Group has troops in all three countries.

Russia’s failures have left these countries in need, but the military regimes’ poor democratic and human rights track records limit possible US assistance. US law restricts most foreign and military aid to coup governments until a democratically elected government retakes office. US law also prohibits government assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. These laws exist to align US aid with American strategic interests by avoiding American support for abusive security forces that can create anti-American sentiment and agitate insurgencies.

To bridge this gap, US officials should encourage their Sahelian counterparts to take credible steps to address these issues, thereby qualifying for waivers that would enable greater US aid. This will be a challenge, as Burkinabe and Malian security forces have perpetrated several atrocities that violate US laws, and all three junta leaders have repeatedly extended their stay in power.

How American officials frame the issue will be critical. US officials should focus on discussing human rights abuses as a shared security concern, given their counterproductive nature, instead of overemphasizing US values. Until then, US officials should focus on providing non-lethal assistance and intelligence sharing as legally allowed. This cooperation will facilitate more effective counterinsurgency operations, save lives, and rebuild trust with these partners.

Greater cooperation could unlock future opportunities for critical mineral access, although this is highly unlikely in the short term. While gold, lithium, and uranium deposits can be found across the Sahel, US companies are highly unlikely to invest given the precarious security situation. This authoritarian shift has also created a hostile business environment, further limiting US private investment.

Counterterrorism is also on the agenda in the Gulf of Guinea. Countries like Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo have sought to grow defense ties with the United States to help confront insurgents. They are seeking to distance themselves from France, and the United States can help ensure Russia does not further fill the void. All three countries receive funding from America’s Global Fragility Act and are becoming increasingly important US defense partners. Congress and the administration should ensure this trajectory continues.

Through strengthened ties, the United States can also open economic opportunities. The Togolese port of Lomé—partially owned by a multinational shipping company with US stakeholders—is poised to become a regional shipping hub and gateway. Côte d’Ivoire ranks among the top ten countries on the continent in terms of GDP and GDP growth, and can serve as a conduit for American investment across the region.

A clear approach is key to preventing Russia, which is playing a zero-sum game and seeks to lock the United States out, from playing spoiler. The Kremlin views its Sahel alliance as a strategic project to help strengthen Russian influence on the continent. Russia’s position in Libya and the Sahel creates a suite of opportunities—ranging from conventional threats to irregular tools, such as weaponizing migration—for Russia to destabilize Europe. The Kremlin’s growing inroads into coastal West Africa threaten US partnerships and strengthen Russia’s ability to project power into the Atlantic, posing a long-term risk for NATO and ultimately the United States.

Moscow’s favored strategy is to use pro-Russian politicians, civil society actors, and media to falsely portray America as an exploitative power—a tactic that consistent messaging and engagement from the United States can stymie. The Trump administration is well-positioned to speak the sovereigntist, “Africa First” language prevalent in West Africa, and capitalize on it by highlighting how a US partnership is a win-win for all involved. This framing can make clear—to African officials and the public—that any anti-US Russian activities are for Moscow’s benefit, not the region’s gain.

The United States will have to balance its immigration priorities as it works with these countries, having already restricted the entry of Nigerien and Togolese citizens due to high visa overstay rates. Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire could also face a travel ban—a move that has recently drawn backlash from African leaders.

The opportunities for the Trump administration in West Africa are numerous and go beyond efforts in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel to include Trump’s summit with leaders of five other coastal West African countries in early July. However, the challenges in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel are unique, and US officials must be prepared to deftly navigate internal obstacles while standing strong against Russia to make serious headway.

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Mali Junta Continues War Against Free Speech, Multiparty Politics

Malian pro-democracy protesters demonstrate against the ruling junta in Bamako in May. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY ADF

BAMAKO, MALI - Malian journalist Seydou Oumar Traoré on May 26 was arrested for criticizing Guinea’s transitional president, Gen. Mamady Doumbouya, marking a continuing trend of jailing Malian critics of regional juntas.

Traoré, who had just returned from an official mission to Kidal as part of the Malian Minister of Defense’s delegation, claimed in a viral social media video that Doumbouya had “betrayed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) by collaborating with Western countries to host terrorist bases on Guinean soil.”

Traoré’s trial is scheduled to begin July 10, according to West Africa Democracy Radio. He has apologized to Doumbouya.

His detention marked the second such arrest in Mali since November 2024, when government officials charged political activist Issa Kaou N’Djim, a then-vice president of Mali’s interim parliament, with “subversive remarks” about Burkina Faso’s junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, according to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX).

In late December 2024, N’Djim was sentenced to two years in prison for defaming a foreign head of state. Analysts said that N’Djim’s case underscored concerns over freedom of expression in Mali, as the conviction of a prominent opposition figure could discourage public discourse and opposition.

Burkina Faso’s media regulator, the Conseil Superieur de la Communication, complained that Malian private television station Joliba TV, which hosted N’Djim, had shamed the Burkinabe government by discrediting a declaration that it had thwarted a coup attempt. Mali’s media regulator, the Higher Authority for Communication, then suspended the station’s license for six months, according to the Media Federation for West Africa.

Critics of Mali’s ruling junta, led by Gen. Assimi Goïta, also face repercussions.

On May 8, two political opposition leaders, Abba Alhassane, secretary-general of the opposition Convergence for the Development of Mali party, and El Bachir Thiam, a leader of the Change party, went missing, IFEX reported. They had participated in May 3 protests in Bamako over the military’s plan to remain in power without holding elections.

Colleagues of Alhassane told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that masked gunmen claiming to be gendarmes arrested him at his Bamako home and took him away in an unmarked car. Unidentified men took Thiam off the streets in Katiu, a town about 15 kilometers from Bamako.

Abdoul Karim Traoré, youth president of the Convergence for the Development of Mali, also attended the May 3 protest. He witnessed Alhassane’s abduction, publicly denounced it and went missing in Bamako on May 11. A Malian security source told Radio France International (RFI) that state security forces were holding him. Pro-democracy leaders said they were staying quiet or hiding to avoid being detained.

“We are fighting with unequal weapons,” a former minister told RFI. “But that in no way alters our determination: for democracy, freedom, and respect for the law.”

Analysts say a return to democracy is unlikely to happen soon. In late April, a national consultation organized by the junta recommended that parties be dissolved and that it be made more difficult to form them. Mali’s National Transition Council on May 13 adopted a bill that abolishes multiparty politics across the country.

“The new law officially bans opposition political meetings, speeches, and organizations,” wrote Lewis Mudge, HRW’s Central Africa director. “The action unfortunately came as no surprise given the ruling military junta’s recent attacks on the political opposition.”

Multiparty politics and freedoms of expression and association were enshrined in Mali’s Constitution of 1992, the year Mali transitioned to a democratic multiparty system. Goïta’s junta had stated it would return to democracy by March 2024.

By enacting the new law, the junta “signed the death certificate of political pluralism in Mali,” former Justice Minister Mamadou Ismaïla Konaté said in reports by France 24 and other outlets. Konaté said the move was “an attempt to systematically demolish political countervailing powers” in Mali.

Goïta’s junta has permanently banned France 24 and RFI, and the junta has suspended French television channel TV5 Monde over its reporting of the May 3 protests, Al-Ahram Online reported. The length of the suspension was unclear. The junta also suspended TV5 Monde for three months in 2024.

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Amadou Bagayoko: The Blind Malian Musician Whose Joyful Songs Changed West African music

Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako on the day the author first met them. Courtesy Lucy Durán

BY LUCY DURAN

PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, SOAS,

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Amadou Bagayoko (1954-2025), Malian guitarist, singer and composer of the famed duo Amadou & Mariam – known as “the blind couple of Mali” – passed away on 4 April in Bamako. He was 70.

The married singers, who met when she was 18 and he 21, took traditional Mali music and blended it with western rock and many other influences to shape a whole new sound that was both rich and playful. They would sell millions of albums for hits like Sunday in Bamako and Sabali.

They would tour the world, opening the 2006 men’s football World Cup, closing the 2024 Paralympics, singing at former US president Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize concert, winning awards along the way.

Despite this fame, they remained tireless activists for Africans with disabilities. They were known and admired at home for their integrity, where Amadou’s passing is much lamented.

As a musician and professor of music with a research focus on Mali’s music, I met and interviewed Amadou several times. His passing heralds the end of an era for Mali’s long-held musical dominance in the international market.

Who are Amadou & Mariam?

Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia were both dedicated promoters of the work of the Institute for the Blind in Bamako, where they had first met in the 1970s as students and went on to be music teachers. They married in 1980 and remained inseparable, forming Amadou & Mariam.

Their hit songs combined the musical traditions of the southern part of Mali, where they both came from (Bougouni, Sikasso) with elements from rock, reggae, Cuban rhythms, and more – all transformed through their own ingenuity, but also, later on, by the ideas of influential producers.

In fact, the surnames Bagayoko and Doumbia are both from the ancient lineage (called Boula) of blacksmiths that date back to the time of the emperor Sunjata Keita, who founded the Mali empire in 1235. The blacksmiths (numu) were often powerful kings. This shared heritage in the noble past of the blacksmiths is significant in their musical synergy.

Amadou Bagayoko

Amadou’s career spanned more than five decades, beginning in the early 1970s when he played electric guitar in several influential Malian dance bands of the time, including Les Ambassadeurs, fronted by the legendary singer Salif Keita.

President Moussa Traoré’s 23-year military regime from 1968 to 1991 favoured the voices of the griots. These hereditary musicians sang the praises of the people in power in a flowery, strident style.

The life of these dance bands was on the wane by the late 1980s, which is when “la grand couple aveugle du Mali” (the blind couple of Mali) were launched – at first, two simple voices accompanied by Amadou’s guitar, recorded on cassette.

At the end of Traore’s rule, Amadou & Mariam’s music responded to the new spirit of democracy that the country was hungry for.

There were many things that set this duo apart from other musicians of the region. They were not griots. Their lyrics are often about the power of love – not a straightforward topic in a country where polygyny (up to four wives, as permitted by Islam) is the norm.

Their presence on stage as a blind couple, looking affectionate and mutually supportive, in their chic, coordinated attire, also raised the profile of people with disabilities. Their melodies were catchy and upbeat.

Meeting Amadou and Mariam

Sorting through my research recently I came across a photo I’d taken of them on my old slides, buried in my archives. It was a revelation to see it again.

I took the photo, with their permission, when I first met Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako. It was at the recording studio that is now known as Bogolan, where they were hoping, at the time, to make some recordings.

It shows Amadou and Mariam in their youth with pride and dignity, values that remained constant for them in later years. On that first encounter, I was struck by their graciousness, their belief in their musical project, and their determination to bring it to a wider public.

I wished at the time that I had the contacts in the record industry to help them. But they did not give up and they slowly built up their career, building on their sound and image, which was and remains unique within the variety of Malian music.

World fame

Against all the odds, with their conviction, talent, strong melodies and good production, Amadou & Mariam became hugely successful in the early 2000s. The album that really launched their international career was Dimanches à Bamako (Sundays in Bamako), brilliantly produced by French-Spanish singer-songwriter Manu Chao, who had had a big international hit with his creative and catchy album Clandestino in 1998.

He brought some of those production values into Amadou & Mariam’s songs. Dimanches à Bamako celebrates the vibrant culture of wedding parties held in the streets of Bamako on Sundays, a day when civil marriage ceremonies are free.

Dimanches à Bamako was the first of several successful albums by Amadou & Mariam that were produced by European producers such as Damon Albarn, with songs like Tie ni Mousso (Husband and Wife) that played on the charming stage presence of Amadou & Mariam as a devoted husband and wife. The songs were accessible and appealing but still delivered punch.

After that first meeting in 1992, we met up again many times, frequently for radio.

Amadou was a much respected and admired musician whose music reached out to audiences around the world. He was hugely loved and appreciated both at home and abroad, not just for his talent and musical creativity as an excellent guitarist and song writer, but also for the image that he and Mariam created on stage.

Together they will be remembered and respected for the values they represent in their music: equality, love, perseverance against disability, and truth. My condolences to Mariam.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Mali Seizes 3 Tons Of Gold From Canadian Company Barrick Amid Dispute Over Share Of Revenue

Barrick Gold Corporation President and CEO Mark Bristow visits the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange after ringing the opening bell, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

BY WILSON MCMAKIN AND BABA AHMED

DAKAR, SENEGAL (AP) — Mali’s military government has started seizing gold stocks of the Canadian mining company Barrick as part of a legal battle over the share of revenue owed to the West African state, according to an internal Barrick letter seen by The Associated Press.

The letter from CEO Mark Bristow to the Malian Mining Minister, dated Monday, says Barrick is “awaiting official confirmation of the proper receipt by the Malian Solidarity Bank,” a government entity.

The seizure follows a warning letter to Barrick earlier this month from Mali’s senior investigating judge, Boubacar Moussa Diarra, saying three tons of gold would be seized.

On Monday, a senior Barrick manager confirmed that three tons had been seized by the military government and placed in the capital, Bamako. The manager spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

According to the senior manager, the gold was taken from a mine near Kayes in the west and transported by plane and truck to the capital late Saturday.

The Malian authorities did not immediately respond for comment.

Valued at around $180 million, the gold seizure is part of the dispute over revenues owed to the state.

In December, Mali issued an arrest warrant for Bristow for charges of money laundering, without giving evidence, and ordered the seizure of Barrick’s gold reserves. The company has offered to pay $370 million.

Mali’s military government previously arrested four senior executives of the Canadian mining company as part of the dispute. They are still being held.

Mali is one of Africa’s leading gold producers, but it has struggled for years with jihadi violence and high levels of poverty and hunger. The military seized power in 2020, and the government has placed foreign mining companies under growing pressure as it seeks to shore up revenues.

In November, the CEO of Australian company Resolute Mining and two employees were arrested in Bamako. They were released after the company paid $80 million to Malian authorities to resolve a tax dispute and promised to pay a further $80 million in the coming months.

Ahmed reported from Bamako, Mali.

Africans Demand A Bigger Share Of Their Natural Resources Wealth

BY JUSTICE MALALA

MALI, WEST AFRICA (BLOOMBERG) - If you thought the detention and subsequent release of Resolute Mining’s chief executive by the government of Mali last month was a one-off, you would have been wrong.

And as Resolute later paid the second, $50 million tranche (the first was $80 million) of a $160 million settlement to the west African country’s military junta, Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold announced that four of its employees in the country had also been detained. Mali claimed Barrick owed $500 million in back taxes while the company said it had already made an $85 million payment of an undisclosed sum. (Mali had demanded $380 million from Resolute in new tax assessments.)

However deplorable Mali’s actions may seem, companies should expect this kind of pressure in other parts of the African continent over the next few years as the philosophy that underpins what happened in Mali spreads. After decades of largely being sidelined while profits from their mineral resources accrued to foreign firms and kleptocratic local leaders, Africa’s new leaders, both democratic and autocratic, want a greater slice of the pie. Some want to achieve this at the negotiating table while others employ much rougher methods.

The age of super-profits for global companies operating in Africa’s resource sector is coming to an end. Multinational companies should hurry to find sustainable ways in which they can share risk and revenue with governments, as they do in jurisdictions like Norway (where taxes are as high as 78%) and the United Arab Emirates.

Animating Kenya’s anti-tax government shutdown this year, concepts of "decoloniality” now drive youth protests, inspire coup leaders such as those in Mali and drive some policy making in democratic states. It is particularly influential in countries where large oil, gas and mineral finds have been made, from Namibia to Mozambique and South Africa. Its influence has seen old and new mining contracts in Botswana, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and elsewhere being renegotiated.

Whether one wants to call it decoloniality or "resource nationalism,” as it was termed in the past, this movement is worth paying attention to. South Africa’s international relations minister Ronald Lamola told the United Nations in September that SA’s priorities during its Group of 20 presidency would include dealing with "issues of predatory mining by some countries and corporations, especially in the quest for Africa’s raw materials and critical minerals.”

Mali is a military dictatorship, but it’s not just the "coup belt” countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger that are demanding a bigger stake in the shareholding, profits or taxes from their mineral resources. Stable, longstanding democracies like Botswana, Senegal, Zambia and new ones such as the DRC, have all renegotiated mining deals with foreign firms in recent years.

The latest events in Mali serve as a warning of what to expect. The country’s eight years of democracy were brought to an end in August 2020 when Colonel Assimi Goita overthrew the president and installed a new leader. In May 2021, Goita deposed the president and declared himself the new leader. He has extended military rule to 2027.

Now Goita is in a terrible bind. The coups have triggered sanctions and the country, the continent’s No. 3 gold producer, needs cash as it battles rebel groups linked to al-Qaida and ISIL. In 2023, Goita signed into law a new mining code enabling the state and local investors to take stakes of up to 35% in new mining projects compared with 20% previously. The Mali government has consistently refused to comment, but the detention of mining executives is regarded by analysts as a tactic that's part of the government's efforts to shore up its finances.

Other coup belt countries are demanding the same, with Guinea’s military junta demanding increased participation of local citizens in the mining value chain. Niger, also led by a military junta, has revoked the mining licenses of several foreign companies.

And mining agreements are being redrafted elsewhere. In his first speech following his election on Oct. 30, Botswana’s President Duma Boko said he would pursue the renegotiated but stalled diamond deal with De Beers. In July 2023 De Beers and Botswana announced that under a new deal, the country would immediately receive a 30% share of the rough stones extracted from the Debswana joint venture, up from 25%, and that share would increase to 50% within a decade. The deal was never signed, but the two sides are now talking again.

In August, Senegal set up a commission to review oil and gas contracts signed with foreign firms. Last month, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s party won an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections, giving him a powerful mandate to forge ahead with the popular review initiative and other changes.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which holds the world’s largest cobalt reserves, has renegotiated billion-dollar infrastructure-for-minerals deals signed in 2008 between Chinese miners and the country’s former president to achieve better terms. Zambia, which has over the past four years renegotiated mining contracts with China, says it plans to establish an investment company that will control at least 30% of critical minerals production from future mines. Following offshore discoveries of oil and gas by TotalEnergies and Shell, Namibia has introduced a draft National Upstream Petroleum Local Content Policy to ensure citizens and companies benefit from the new finds.

Are these jurisdictions worried about backlash and investor skittishness? Resource nationalism may work only when commodity markets are booming — and that’s not the case today.

Ironically, Botswana’s new president and his deputy (Harvard Law School and Wharton Business School alumni, respectively) want exactly the same thing as Mali’s military leaders. Botswana’s leaders and De Beers executives are currently renegotiating the decades-old diamond deal with cordiality and a recognition of what’s at stake as partners. Their interactions are an example to governments and businesses across the globe of an attempt to solve the growing crisis around mineral resource exploitation on the continent.

The alternative to what De Beers and Botswana are doing is Mali’s way. That’s the road to nowhere.

In Search Of The 800-Year-Old Instrument That Keeps West African Tradition Alive

In this adapted excerpt from his book, Custodians of Wonder, author Eliot Stein becomes one of the first foreign journalists in history to see the Sosso-Bala, an ancient balafon that dates back to the founding of the Mali empire

BY ELIOT STEIN

Early on in his new book, “Custodians of Wonder,” BBC Travel writer Eliot Stein tallies some recent effects of globalization, a process that seems to only speed up. Nine languages, he notes, are lost annually; half of the world’s current languages could go extinct within the next 100 years. Nearly 3,000 villages in Spain could turn into ghost towns and 896 villages in Japan are estimated to disappear by 2040, as younger populations migrate to cities.

In this context, “Custodians of Wonder” (out tomorrow via St. Martins) feels like a crucial act of preservation — an attempt to document cultural marvels that are, as Stein puts it, at the edge of disappearance. Stein traveled the globe to meet the last people keeping ancient traditions alive, from Scandinavia’s final night watchman to the Peruvian bridge master who reconstructs a bridge out of grass every year in the tradition of the fabled Inca road system.

In this adapted excerpt, we meet Balla Kouyaté, one in a long line of West African “djelis,” men who function as living history books to preserve stories, culture, and traditions. Some, like Kouyaté, play a xylophone-like instrument called the balafon. Stein joined Kouyaté, who had relocated to America, in a journey back to Mali and Guinea. There, Stein would come to understand a centuries-old tradition and become one of the first foreign journalists in history to see the Sosso-Bala, an 800-year-old balafon that dates back to the founding of the Mali empire.

NEARLY 800 YEARS AGO, Sundiata Keita founded the largest and greatest kingdom in West African history: the Mali Empire. At its height, around 1300, it stretched for some 2,000 kilometers west to east, from the Senegalese coast across 10 modern-day nations, and for much of the early 14th century, Mali was the wealthiest empire in the world.

When Sundiata took the throne, he appointed a man named Balla Fasséké Kouyaté to be the guardian of a sacred instrument called a balafon. The precursor of the xylophone and marimba, a balafon is made by carefully cutting 21 wooden slats into different lengths, fixing them atop hallow calabashes, and striking them with mallets wound with the gum and sap of a rubber tree. Kouyaté’s job wasn’t just to play the balafon, but to be the empire’s official chronicler, memorizing its history and sharing it with the public as he played.

Ever since, in an astounding tradition that continues to this day, male members of the past 27 generations of the Kouyaté family have learned to master the balafon and serve as living history books, preserving the ancient stories, culture, and traditions of the more than 13 million Mande people living across West Africa. These chroniclers, as anyone who read Alex Haley’s book Roots may remember, are called “griots” in English. But in the Mandinka language of West Africa, they are known as djelis. The word “djeli” means blood, and it is said that just as people can’t live without blood, a Mande community can’t live without a djeli.

To be a djeli is a birthright, and over the centuries, these ancient balafon-playing bards have served as equal parts historians, praise singers, and ambassadors of the kings and communities they serve. They memorize and recite national epics, recall family genealogies with encyclopedic fluency, announce births and deaths, oversee important family events, and facilitate marriages among bashful couples.

Remarkably, the original balafon that Sundiata first bestowed to Kouyaté eight centuries ago still exists. Known as the Sosso-Bala, it is kept in a round mud hut in the remote 150-person village of Niagassola, Guinea, which has no running water or electricity. All modern balafons descend from this instrument, and it cannot leave the village unless it is carried on the head of its official guardian, known as the balatigui. In fact, it is only brought out of the mud hut once a year for a single ceremonial playing during Eid, and only the balatigui is allowed to play it.

n 2001, the Sosso-Bala was proclaimed by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Of the 678 global traditions, practices, and human expressions on the list — which include things like Argentine tango, Chinese calligraphy, and Indian yoga — the Sosso-Bala is the only that’s entire history has been maintained within a single family. When it was proclaimed, the son of the balatigui and the heir apparent to guard the Sosso-Bala was a man named Balla Kouyaté. But at the time, Balla wasn’t living in Mali, Guinea, or anywhere in West Africa; he was an undocumented immigrant hauling canned food off trucks at a convenience store in Albany, New York, by day and gently tapping the wooden bars of his balafon at night to not wake up his roommates.

Balla still lives in the U.S., but his situation is quite different these days. The 49-year-old has been featured as a session player on more than 45 albums, including two Grammy Award-winning recordings by Yo-Yo Ma. His music has been archived in the Library of Congress; he’s performed at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center; and he’s led demonstrations at Harvard, MIT, and the New England Conservatory, where he currently teaches a class on musical improvisation. In 2019, he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. government’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. But while this award was received with a swell of enthusiasm back in West Africa, virtually no one in the U.S. had ever written about him or his family’s astonishing legacy.

And so it happened that in 2022, after a weeklong search to connect the dots from a 13th-century emperor to Niagassola, Guinea, to an address in Medford, Massachusetts, I sent a hopeful email to a man I’d never met, asking if he’d be willing to meet me, to tell me his family’s story, and to let me follow him back to the place where it all started.

Within 30 minutes of hitting send, I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was Balla, and the first thing he told me was, “I’ve been waiting for an email like this for more than 20 years.”

I had no way of knowing at the time, but Balla’s life had recently been overshadowed by grief. Three months earlier, his wife, Kris, had succumbed to cancer, leaving Balla all alone to care for the couple’s 15-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. As Balla told me, Kris was more than just his partner; she was his anchor and biggest supporter. She was also instrumental in his success. Kris was the one who filled out each of Balla’s grant applications, who found him teaching positions, and who arranged access to a studio at Harvard, where she worked as a media technician, so he could record his debut album in 2007.

When I met Balla at his Medford condo, he was putting the finishing touches on an album that had been five years in the making and that he had dedicated to his late wife. It not only features his brothers and cousins as bandmates, but also his two American kids on backing vocals in Mandinka.

Ten days later, I joined Balla and his children on a journey back to Mali and Guinea that he had been planning since Kris’ passing. As he explained, it was a chance to come home, to heal, and to remind the kids of their roots. Along the way, I set out to understand how this 800-year-old tradition has survived, to meet the balatigui, and to seek his permission to become one of the first foreign journalists in history to set eyes on the Sosso-Bala.

FOR ALL ITS dazzling prosperity, one of its most striking aspects of the Mali Empire is how little the outside world knew about it at the height of its power, and how little people still know about it today. Chances are if you were to stop people on the street outside of West Africa and ask them about the Mali Empire, a few may vaguely recall the fabled city of Timbuktu, but the majority are likely to have never heard of it.

One of the reasons for this is that the Mali Empire was a notoriously secretive place. In fact, only one first-hand written account of it exists. As a result, much of what scholars now know about it — how Sundiata issued one of the world’s first human rights charters, how he was better known as Mari Djata (meaning “The Lion King”), and how the story of Africa’s real-life Lion King is what inspired the Disney film — comes directly from djelis like Balla.

As Balla explained, once upon a time, the only djelis were the Kouyatés, but over the centuries, this social caste of musicians has expanded to include other families, such as the Diabates and Sissokos. And while the balafon may be the most famous djeli instrument, it’s far from the only one.

Google “djeli music,” and in addition to balafon performances, you’ll find renditions of ancient epics, folk songs, and modern Afropop performed by men on the djembe (a goblet-shaped drum), the ngoni (a lute-like instrument widely believed to have inspired the banjo), and the kora (a sort of 21-stringed harp that produces one of the world’s most enchanting sounds). Women can also be djelis and usually specialize in singing historical narratives. These days, djelis are essentially the pop stars and divas of Malian music, and if you wander into any cafe or club in Mali playing music videos, you’ll notice many of the artists have the last name Kouyaté.

Balla’s father performed across West Africa and taught each of his sons the basics of the balafon, but Balla took to it in a way that none of his eight older brothers had. When he was 12, he dropped out of school and started performing for farmers outside of Niagassola with his mother. He was so small his mother placed him on top of a large rock, and while she sang and played the karinyan (a sort of two-handed cowbell), Balla performed historical epics for hours on end, as teams of 25 men plowed the fields to the rhythms of the family’s synchronized beat.

As word of his balafon ability spread, Balla started getting asked to perform at baby showers, coming-of-age ceremonies, and weddings from Mali’s capital, Bamako, to Niagassola. By 18, he began accompanying his sister, Kaniba, a well-known singer, on tour to Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and the Republic of the Congo. Soon, musicians across West Africa began asking Balla to record with them, and by the time Balla was 26, he was one of the most in-demand session players in West Africa. But Balla didn’t just want to back up other artists; he wanted to do his own thing. So, in 1999, a year after his father became appointed as the guardian of the Sosso-Bala, Balla did something previously unheard of with the ancient instrument: He started playing two at the same time.

“With one balafon, you have seven notes. With two, I tune them so that I can make 12 and a half notes, and lots of quarter notes. With this [full chromatic scale], I can play any music in the world — traditional djeli music, but also music that a balafon is not supposed to play.”

I had never heard a balafon before, let alone two, so before our trip, I went to Queens, New York, to see Balla perform. The instrument sounds like a much richer marimba, with the hollowed-out calabashes below each slat acting as a resonator, amplifying each woody note. For the first hour, Balla played traditional djeli music. As a Malian woman belted out joyous epics in a piercing vibrato, Balla looped a syncopated, head-nodding rhythm behind her. Later, when an American blues band asked Balla to join them onstage, he used his double-balafon setup to seemingly tap into a deeper range of human emotion, darting off on rolling, improvised solos and wringing a sense of pining and pain from his family’s ancient tool of praise.

Naturally, this decision to break from tradition was met with controversy, especially within Balla’s family: “My father thought I was out of my mind. In our culture, no one had ever played two balafons. He thought it was out of line. But when I explained it to him, he started to accept it. I said, ‘Dad, I don’t just want to keep this tradition alive. I want to bring it to more of the world.’” And so, a year later, Balla followed his sister and boarded a plane for the U.S.

Two years later, Balla recorded his own album, Sababu. Its success and his subsequent tour led to collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma (who asked him to join his Silkroad Ensemble), banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck (whose family remains close with Balla), and guitarist Ben Harper (who cried the first time he heard Balla play, saying it tapped into something deep within his African roots).

Mali is one of the world’s great musical cradles, and its sounds have been beguiling foreigners ever since the medieval explorer Ibn Battuta provided the only surviving eyewitness account of the empire. In his book, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, he describes the emperor’s djeli, whom he identified as a Kouyaté, playing an instrument “with sticks to produce a wonderful sound.”

Centuries later, enslaved Malians would bring their melisma singing style, call-and-response narration, and knowledge of making plucked and strummed stringed instruments like the kora and ngoni to the cotton fields of the American South, leading many musicologists to declare Mali to be the origin of the blues. When you listen to Malian superstars like the late Ali Farka Touré, whose pensive, spiritual guitar riffs born from a life working the land led him to be dubbed “the African John Lee Hooker,” it’s often difficult to distinguish between Malian folk and Mississippi blues. But as Touré famously said, “This music has been taken from here [Mali]. I play traditional music, and I don’t know what the blues is.” African Americans would later mix and morph these West African sounds into jazz, rock & roll, soul, funk, and hip-hop.

Since djelis were the only social caste permitted to play music in the Mali Empire — and in its former territories long after the empire’s collapse — they are likely the ones who introduced many of these African traditions to the New World during the slave trade. This makes their legacy doubly important: Not only have their long memories and handed-down epics formed the backbone of Mali’s history, but their transplanted sounds helped form the backbone of much of Western music as well.

Indeed, it was a Kouyaté who wrote Mali’s national anthem. The call sign of Radio Mali is a refrain from the Epic of Sundiata that Balla Fasséké Kouyaté first performed. And stories recounted by generations of Kouyatés have inspired Malian films and soap operas. This is the legacy that Balla was born into.

As Daouda Keita, the director of the National Museum of Mali, told me, “We are a society of oral tradition. Only the djeli knows that history, and the Kouyatés are the original djeli. They preserve the collective memory of our people. If we lose them, we lose the history of our culture.”

Russia-Ukraine War Spills Into West Africa: Mali Attacks Signal Dangerous Times Ahead

BY OLAYINKA AJALA

SENIOR LECTURER IN POLITICS

AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY

Russia suffered significant blows to its reputation in mid-2024. An attack on its territory by Ukraine came as a surprise. In west Africa, the Wagner mercenary group, supported by Russia, suffered one of its heaviest fatalities in Mali.

An alliance of Tuareg rebel groups known as the Permanent Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad joined forces in late July with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, a coalition of four terrorist groups operating in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The rebel-terrorist alliance attacked a Malian army contingent which was supported by Wagner fighters. After three days of heavy fighting, dozens of Malian soldiers and Wagner fighters were either killed or captured

The attack was significant in many ways. For one thing, it shows the Malian junta is having difficulty in securing the country (its purported reason for taking over, expelling France and turning to Russia).

For another, it highlights the impact of geopolitics in the region. The attack has raised concern that a new proxy war between Russia and Ukraine might be starting in Africa.

This is the second country in Africa where Ukraine is getting involved in local conflicts to attack Russian elements. Ukraine special forces are “active” in Sudan’s civil war, where Russia has interests.

As a scholar of African security and politics, I research conflicts, governance, terrorism and development on the continent. At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, I analysed African countries’ position on the war and explained why several chose to be “neutral” and not take sides on the conflict.

I argued that many African countries did not want to get involved in what was seen as a proxy war between the US and Russia. After Russia invaded Ukraine, many countries in Europe as well as the US flooded Ukraine with weapons to defend its territory. The EU for the first time supplied lethal aid to Ukraine.

Although the US and European countries denied it was a proxy war, the director of the CIA under Barack Obama admitted, “It’s a proxy war with Russia whether we say so or not.” This view was shared by several countries in Africa which were determined to remain neutral in order not to be drawn into the conflict.

With the involvement of Ukraine in the war in Sudan and now in Mali, it looks like African countries are in fact getting drawn in, and on their own territory.

A new proxy war will have severe implications for the region and continent more broadly. The security dynamics in Africa are very complicated, with issues such as ethnicity, religion, inequality, topography and poverty adding to the fragility.

Libya is an example of how external interference could result in a conflict lasting decades and destabilising the entire region. African leaders must avoid such foreign intervention as that of Libya, which has been labelled a failure.

Foreign dimension of the Mali conflict

Further pointers to a proxy war between the US and Ukraine on the one hand and Russia on the other on African territory were laid bare when a representative of Ukraine’s security service, Andriy Yusov, stated on television that Ukraine “enabled” the attack on the Malian army and Wagner.

The ambassador of Ukraine to Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, Yurii Pyvovarov, has also been accused by the government of Senegal of providing “unequivocal and unqualified support for the terrorist attack” in Mali.

In response, Mali and Niger have severed diplomatic relationships with Ukraine. Senegal also summoned the Ukrainian ambassador. The west African economic grouping Ecowas declared its “firm disapproval and firm condemnation of any outside interference in the region.”

This is a major setback for Ukraine in the region.

Although Ukraine has denied supporting terrorist groups in the region, its involvement in the death of Malian soldiers has attracted condemnation.

Russia has already seized the attack to label Ukraine an enemy of Africa. Russia accused Ukraine of opening a “second front” in Africa and supporting terrorist groups.

Read more: Scramble for the Sahel – why France, Russia, China and the United States are interested in the region

Ukraine’s position

In June 2024, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, organised a summit to gather support for his call on Russia to end its invasion; 92 countries participated, including 57 heads of state or government.

About 80 countries signed a document condemning Russia for the war and declaring Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Only 12 of these countries were from Africa. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso did not attend. Fewer than 20 African countries sent representatives.

This is another proof that African countries do not want to get involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Many have also abstained from previous UN General Assembly votes. This is despite Ukraine trying to get support from the continent.

Narratives about the role of Ukraine in Mali would only weaken its influence in Africa. This is because several countries on the continent are fragile and terrorism is a serious problem.

A Russian propaganda win?

Since the recent coups in the west African region within the last four years, Russia has positioned itself as an alternative to western influence there. It is benefiting from the chaos in the region by quickly filling the gap left by France and its allies in the Sahel.

Shortly after the ambush on Malian and Wagner forces, the foreign minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, reiterated Russia’s commitment to helping Mali boost its combat capability, train military personnel and address pressing socioeconomic problems.

For over a decade, Russia has presented itself as an alternative partner in fighting terrorism in the region. For instance, when the US refused to sell weapons to Nigeria because of a damning report by Amnesty International accusing the Nigerian army of human rights abuse, Nigeria turned to Russia for weapons.

With Russia losing allies in the west since its invasion of Ukraine, Africa has been an important region of support. Ukraine is also very keen to get the support of African countries, as seen in its intention to open 10 new embassies on the continent. In a war where both sides are looking for external support, Ukraine’s loss might become Russia’s gain.

A way forward

African leaders must unite to condemn any form of external interference that could further destabilise the region. They should demand accountability from Russia on the activities of the Wagner group on the continent while making it clear to Ukraine that foreign interference will not be tolerated on the continent.

The Tuareg situation must also be addressed. Former president Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger was able to complete two terms in office partly because he accommodated the demands of the Tuaregs in his country and addressed their concerns.

The government in Mali should understand that there is no military solution to the Tuareg dilemma. They should take a cue from Issoufou’s policies which placated the Tuaregs in Niger during his presidential terms.

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