Niamey, capital of Niger, is preparing to be the venue for the first summit of the Alliance of the Sahel States, an alliance formed in September of 2023, but which takes on a new context with the incorporation into its leadership of Colonel Assimi Goita of Mali and Captain Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso, in this case.
All against General Abdourahamane Tiani of the host country, Niger, in the context of the imminent summit of the West African regional organization, ECOWAS, which is scheduled for the following day in Niger, to which at the beginning of 2024 they summoned to unsubscribe.
In Niamey, the message is well received: one day after the first-ever opening of the Sahelian States Summit, announced as a “historic event”, the population invited to come out in large scales for the event, promises to reserve its best welcome at the service of the revolutionary leaders at the service of security and the development of the region. The more justified: the revolutionaries who put in place the power now in place, all got power at a gallop between 2020 and 2023. The first Sahelian States summit could not walk out of that way.
This will be the first meeting among the three heads of state, though they have already met bilaterally with each other. All have since distanced themselves from France, the former colonizer, and West African bloc ECOWAS, which they accuse of being subservient to Paris and insufficiently supportive in their battles against jihadists.
Even though many heads of state in the region still call for dialogue between the two blocs, despite this distancing. Some three months after he took power in Dakar, Bassirou Diomaye Faye of Senegal had declared that reconciliation between ECOWAS and AES was possible.