Geography Archives: Mali

The Horn of Africa was filled with hope in 2018, when Somali President Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed an agreement promising regional cooperation on trade, culture, and security, but that hope has been dashed by renewed conflict.

On December 2, 2024, Mali’s popular anti-imperialist government issued an arrest warrant for Canadian mining company Barrick Gold’s CEO, Mark Bristow, a South African national who fought for the apartheid army in the 1970s.

WEST Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonization of the sort that India did.

These are dark days for the empire.

Land area under ECOWAS, which is condemned by West Africa’s popular movements as an agent of French imperialism, has been reduced to less than half after their withdrawal.

Journalist Nick Turse has shown that terrorist attacks have spiked exponentially as a result of the growing U.S. military presence in the Sahelian region.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are charting a new course—one of increased economic and security sovereignty.

The military governments of three African states, which all deposed their Western-backed leaders in recent years, have agreed to assist each other, individually or collectively, in case of external aggression or internal threats to their sovereignty.

Of late however there has been a popular anti-imperialist upsurge in several countries of Francophone Africa. In Guinea, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso, new anti-imperialist governments have come to power in the last couple of years that want French troops out of their countries; and in Mali they have even succeeded in getting French troops out.

This isn’t what Western countries wanted to sow in West Africa, writes Owen Schalk.

Niger is shaping up to be the surprising frontline of the new Cold War.

Burkina Faso and Mali have declared their willingness to defend Niger with armed force if France, Nigeria, or ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) were to intervene in Niger following the recent change of power.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who leads the Burkinabé government, came to power through a coup d’état in September 2022. He ousted Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself come to power through a coup in January 2022. Neither of these coups was a surprise.

On 21 November 2022, Mali’s interim prime minister, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, issued a statement on social media announcing the government’s decision ‘to ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by [French] NGOs operating in Mali’.

In the first two weeks of May 2022, the Malian military government ejected the French military and withdrew from the French political project, G5 Sahel. Deep resentment spread across Mali because of the civilian casualties from French military attacks and because of the French government’s arrogant attitude towards the Malian government.

Mali recently announced that it would no longer be part of the G5 Sahel. From the beginning, it was clear that the formation of the G5 Sahel was encouraged by France, and that the real focus was to be security.

The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence of a new popular and historical subject, and at consolidating the gains made at these meetings. It seeks to advance the principle of the right to an equitable existence for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace, justice and diversity; and to promote the means to reach these goals at the local level and for all of humanity.