Coalition of Coups: The AES-ECOWAS Split and West Africa’s Security Crisis
Though a regional dilemma, a fracturing alliance in West Africa has called into question the efficacy of Western hegemony and has affirmed claims that the liberal international order is wavering. On January 29, 2025, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) published an official press release announcing the exit of Burkina Faso, the Republic of Mali, and the Republic of Niger from the coalition. These three countries formerly constituted over half of the alliance’s total territory, 17% of the alliance’s total population, and roughly 7.7% of the alliance’s total gross domestic product (GDP). Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger instead chose to form their own coalition, the Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), or Alliance of Sahel States. While a complex series of interactions between ECOWAS member states led to this fracture, its consequences will follow an ongoing trend of regional security deterioration, de-democratization in the Sahel, and further alienation of West Africa from the liberal international order. Without a global realignment of political priorities toward sustainable and peaceful development in Africa, security issues on the continent will metastasize into wider, more destructive conflicts.
ECOWAS and its Benefits
The Treaty of Lagos, signed in 1975 by 15 West African nations, created ECOWAS to promote economic cooperation and trade liberalization between countries in the region. The goal, to be achieved through the coordination of economic policy and national interests, was to create a “borderless region” through which the population could sustainably take advantage of material wealth, receive adequate education and healthcare, and live peacefully. The economic focuses of ECOWAS include industries like agriculture, transportation, telecommunications, finance, commerce, and natural resources. ECOWAS also serves as a vehicle for the distribution of foreign aid in the region, enhancing economic growth. The benefits of being an ECOWAS member include reduced trade barriers within the alliance, freedom of movement for capital and people, economic cooperation through mutual investment in infrastructure, increased tax revenues through tax harmonization, and the assurance of regional security through military cooperation, among other advantages.
While many of ECOWAS’s fundamental principles focus on establishing economic interdependence and assuring human rights within member states, the coalition also maintains an overt security focus. The alliance guarantees non-aggression from other member states, peaceful settlement of disputes, and maintenance of regional security through the promotion of “good neighbourliness.” The coalition governs itself according to liberal principles like democracy, good governance, and human dignity. Frequent instances of democratic reversals in the region have prompted ECOWAS to respond with punitive measures like sanctions and threats of military intervention, and ECOWAS often involves itself in high-level peace negotiations when democratic processes break down. This democratic agenda has alienated member states who continually suffer anti-democratic military takeovers and insurgencies, resulting in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s withdrawal from ECOWAS and reconsolidation into the AES in 2025.
The Birth of the AES
The AES, founded by the signing of the Liptako-Gourma Charter in 2023, embodies a dramatic shift away from ECOWAS’s mission. The AES focuses on establishing collective defense and military cooperation, providing security guarantees for its members, and requiring mutual defense against threats to sovereignty and territorial integrity. The charter differs from ECOWAS, as it excludes commitments to concepts like economic interdependence and democratization. The coalition’s members have highlighted the accelerating decline of Western influence in the region; AES states have eviscerated ECOWAS for its ties to formerly colonialist Western powers, preferring the cultivation of less “invasive” relationships with Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). AES members have blamed ECOWAS for many of the region’s woes, including selling out the Sahel to its former colonizers and supporting Salafi-jihadists responsible for insecurity in the region. The public political fallout between ECOWAS and the AES suggests that this reconsolidation has more systematic consequences than a simple realignment of regional and foreign interests.
Of the last seven successful coups in Africa in the past three years, five occurred within the three AES member states. This worrying spike in putschist violence since 2020 illustrates an inflection point in the historical trend of coups in Africa; Africa averaged less than one successful coup per year in the 2010s—the continent’s lowest rate since decolonization. That rate roughly doubled at the onset of the 2020s. Putschists in the new AES states commonly cite worsening regional security, Salafi-jihadist insurgencies, and anti-colonial sentiments as their primary motives for establishing new military regimes.
Niger’s July 2023 coup, and ECOWAS’s response to the coup, were the most immediate trigger for the formation of the AES. ECOWAS, recognizing the dire consequences for the reversal of democratic processes in the region, sought to penalize the military takeover, levying severe sanctions against Niger and even threatening military intervention. Despite ECOWAS lifting some of its most devastating sanctions in early 2024, this experience alienated Niger from the democratization mission of ECOWAS and triggered a revisionist reconsolidation of Niger and its coupist neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso, away from ECOWAS and into the newly founded AES. ECOWAS remains open to negotiation and continues to afford some member benefits to AES states, though the AES has reaffirmed its commitment to its breakaway from the bloc.
Consequences for Regional Security
Some argue that the AES maintains a distinct advantage over ECOWAS due to its sharper defense scope and decentralized bureaucracy. The coalition is likely to make swifter and more decisive decisions compared to ECOWAS by virtue of its smaller member count, more consistent national priorities, and fewer bureaucratic barriers to cooperation. The argument is that this “minilateralism,” as opposed to ECOWAS’s multilateralism, provides a more direct, immediate solution to regional insecurity. Most experts on the region, however, argue that this fracturing will weaken regional collective security and economic development. The AES’s narrow military scope fails to confront the root causes of violent extremism such as poverty, illiteracy, youth unemployment, corruption, and disinformation.
While AES states blame ECOWAS and Western collaborators for the worsening jihadist movement in the region, data shows that violence perpetrated by Salafi-jihadists has increased since the putschist regimes came to power throughout the last five years. Although the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Mali––the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA)––was not as successful as once hoped for, resulting in Mali’s withdrawal of consent in 2023, Western counterterrorism efforts such as the French’s Opération Serval did much to combat jihadist influence. The AES states’ neglect of economic mitigation strategies for conflict negatively impacts its ability to build off past, present, or future military successes.
Inadequate state capacity for AES states to secure their own sovereignty, and vitriolic expulsions of Western security backers like France and the United States, have left societies in these countries largely undefended from jihadist expansion. Attempts to replace Western cooperation with Russian Wagner mercenaries have failed to stem the violence, proving that the AES’s military-only solution for fighting insecurity will result in increasing violence, economic deprivation, and international isolation. Russian presence in the Sahel has intensified these conflicts—Wagner mercenaries are notorious for committing human rights violations and atrocities against civilians, potentially legitimizing jihadist and insurgent militias’ influence on local populations. Continuing instability is likely to drive AES states to adopt long-term, exploitive resource agreements with the PRC in place of economic cooperation with the West, further intensifying the root causes of jihadist violence.
Long Term Threats
The future of collaboration in the Sahel remains uncertain. The growing intensity of insurgencies throughout the continent threatens to heighten Sahelian insecurity as fighters, arms, and financing for combat proliferate. While future interactions between ECOWAS and the AES are not set in stone, rhetoric from the withdrawing parties indicates that the relationship will remain hostile. Burkina Faso and Mali came to the defense of Niger after ECOWAS threatened military intervention in response to Niger’s most recent coup, announcing that an intervention would be deemed a “declaration of war” against them as well. AES states have equated ECOWAS to the jihadi groups responsible for insecurity in the region, and have publicly identified the alliance as a threat. AES leaders’ repeated public references to mutual security guarantees in the AES charter indicate that AES member states are committed to defending one another if they are attacked, and that they view ECOWAS as a potential perpetrator.
ECOWAS, while holding a strong stance against democratic backsliding before AES states withdrew, has eased its pressure to lure the coupist governments back into the alliance. The alliance announced that the withdrawing states would maintain some of the benefits of ECOWAS membership to strengthen negotiations, but the AES has largely rebuffed ECOWAS’s attempts at reconciliation. ECOWAS also reversed the sanctions on Niger which triggered the reconsolidation in the first place, indicating that they recognize the sanctions’ harsh impacts may have been inconsistent with their political objectives. ECOWAS will likely reevaluate its use of sanctions for democratization efforts, as harsh economic sanctions have served to legitimize the putschist regimes and their withdrawal from the alliance despite their devastating impacts on civilians.
These sentiments are a significant development for geopolitical dynamics in the region. They indicate that ECOWAS and the AES may be sliding into a new security dilemma, resulting in the possibility of further regional escalation, even war, between states. As the global environment shifts from Western hegemony to a more multipolar system, with a more assertive Russia and PRC, this security dilemma may become instrumentalized by great power politics. While thus far Western militaries have been replaced by Russian forces in the region, it is not inconceivable that the West will seek to re-enter the region by backing political challengers to junta governments. This could potentially lead to a proxy conflict in a region that is already notorious for paralyzing violence. Growing extremist movements on the continent, including ones in the Sahel, will further threaten regional security as fighters and weapons move into the region and aim to assert their ambitions internationally.
Relevance to Global Politics
Regional insecurity in the Sahel has many significant impacts on foreign policy objectives for countries around the world. The Sahel already serves as a hotbed for Salafi-jihadist terrorism and, if regional terrorist groups build more capacity, it may result in more frequent terrorist attacks internationally. Globally significant waterways and trade routes traverse through and around the continent, meaning supply chains could be impacted by metastasized security threats. The Sahel, and Africa in general, is rife with valuable natural resources that will be necessary to increasing technological and agricultural output globally. The international community already struggles to manage the global migration crisis––if it worsens due to a wider war in the Sahel, the state capacity required to handle this global challenge will deteriorate. International norms could be delegitimized, especially if the international community fails to muster a comparable response to a war in Africa as it does to a war in Europe. In a world enraptured by conflicts in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, it is unfortunate that insecurity in the Sahel, and Africa more broadly, has not received the strategic focus it deserves. This lack of focus created the conditions necessary for the AES’s founding in the first place–conditions under which countries turn their backs on the liberal, rules-based order.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: AfrikInfos