Africafé : The situation in the Sahel and the ongoing conflicts

June 30, 2022

In this episode of Africafé, Rida Lyammouri will talk about the ongoing conflicts in the Sahel, evoking the instability in Mali and Burkina Faso and suggests ways forward for greater engagement from the international community in helping fragile states in the region.

Speakers
Rida Lyammouri
Senior Fellow
Rida Lyammouri is a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South. His research activities focus on geopolitics and international relations in the West African Sahel, a region he has worked on for about a decade. He has extensive experience supporting both governmental and non-governmental organizations in the areas of international aid, development, and security. Some of the topics he covers include countering violent extremism (CVE), conflict prevention and conflict sensitivity, humanitarian access, and migration. Mr. Lyammouri has contributed to numerous in-depth research and analysis reports aiming at building deeper understanding of regional and domestic challenges. He is often solicited by various stakeholders to provide policy recommendations on how to address va ...
Youssef Tobi
International Relations Specialist
Tobi Youssef has joined the Policy Center for the New South in 2017. He is currently working on Politics and Governance in the Maghreb Region; his areas of expertise are geopolitics, political risk and nation building. Youssef Tobi obtained a Master Degree at Sciences Po Lyon  where he wrote two thesis on “ the role of Moroccan Bank in Africa, a non-state actor in service of the Diplomacy”  and the“ Chasm between the mediatic and associative representation of refugees : a case study”.  Prior to working at the Think tank, Tobi Youssef participated in a Social Entrepreneurship Project in Beirut, Lebanon and conducted an internship in a NGO based in Marseille where he assisted refugees and helped raise funds. ...

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    Pierre Englebert
    February 11, 2022
    Almost ten years after the beginning of the security crisis in the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger face a graver predicament than ever before. In the throes of multiple insurgencies, they and their foreign patrons, including France, have shown the limits of military containment. While these three countries are the victims of terrorist aggression, their crises also have deep domestic roots, including long-standing patterns of state abuses of their populations, even in the more d ...
  • December 9, 2021
    A summit on the African vision of Sahel’s future with a focus on development around the 5 Sahelian Ministers of Economy and the report “Sahel: Moving Beyond Military Containment” ...
  • Authors
    November 29, 2021
    The proliferation of community-based armed groups (CBAGs) in Mali’s Mopti and Ségou Regions has contributed to transforming Central Mali into a regional epicenter of conflict since 2016. Due to the lack of adequate presence of the state, certain vulnerable, conflict-affected communities resorted to embracing non-state armed groups as security umbrellas in the context of inter-communal violence. These local conflicts are the result of long-standing issues over increasing pressure on ...
  • Authors
    November 9, 2021
    Events in the Sahel, and Mali especially, are taking an uncertain and worrying turn. Mali witnessed two coups d’état in less than a year, while the West African Sahel went through its most violent year yet and there are no signs that the violence is slowing down. In the midst of this unprecedented instability, recent developments involving Mali’s transitional government and the international community, France in particular, provide no assurances that things are likely to improve any ...
  • Authors
    November 2, 2021
    In the Sahel, and Central Mali in particular, the proliferation of armed groups over the past decade has resulted in formal and informal non-state governance structures. This paper assesses the various definitions and typologies associated with rebel and jihadist governance in order to better understand the mechanisms of governance provision used by key non-state governance providers in Central Mali.   ...
  • Authors
    Pascal Chaigneau
    Eugène Berg
    Rodolphe Monnet
    Jacques Gravereau
    Jérémy Ghez
    Olivier Tramond
    Niagalé Bagayoko
    Alain Oudot de Dainville
    Jérôme Evrard
    Coordination de l’ouvrage: Imane Lahrich
    Fatine Cherkaoui
    October 28, 2021
    Depuis l’accession au trône du Roi Mohammed VI, l’Afrique s’est transformée en priorité de la diplomatie marocaine. Sur le plan économique, l’Afrique est devenue le prolongement naturel du Maroc en termes d’investissements et d’implantations. Pascal Chaigneau s’attarde sur les relations affaiblies Europe-Afrique, l’ambitieuse relation Chine-Afrique ainsi que les relations entre la Russie, les Etats-Unis, la Turquie ou encore les pays du Golf et l’Afrique. Ce chapitre traite égalemen ...
  • Authors
    Johannes Claes
    Kars de Bruijne
    Sophie Mertens
    Eman Ragab
    Clara-Auguste Süß
    September 20, 2021
    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a cataclysmic impact on all aspects of the functioning of our world. The relevance of the possibility of the spread of a global virus with the spread of terrorism is not immediately obvious as it is difficult for a direct causal link to be scientifically established. However, taking into consideration how state responses and pre-existing socioeconomic grievances can be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic can lead to innovative findings on how terrorist gr ...
  • May 4, 2021
    The Sahelian states of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso continue to face unprecedented violence arising from multidimensional conflicts. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (2019), “the Sahel has experienced the most rapid increase in activity by militant groups of any region in Africa in recent years. Violent events involving extremist groups in the region have doubled every year since 2015”. In addition to the presence of multiple violent extremist organizations (VEO ...