Sahel rulers given six months to rethink regional bloc exit

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are set to withdraw from ECOWAS in January next year

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has granted Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger a six-month grace period to reconsider their decision to withdraw from the regional organization.

The three neighbors are officially set to leave the political and economic bloc on January 29, 2025. However, at a summit in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Sunday, leaders of the regional authority agreed to extend the due date to July 29.

“The authority decides to set the period from 29 January, 2025 to 29 July 2025 as a transitional period and to keep ECOWAS doors open to the three countries during the transition period,” Oumar Touray, the president of the ECOWAS commission, said at the end of the summit.

Earlier this year, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger jointly announced that they were leaving the 15-nation grouping, accusing it of posing a threat to their sovereignty by serving as a tool for foreign powers, including France. The bloc, which is home to more than 400 million people, had threatened to send a French-backed military force into Niger to restore democratic order after Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown in July 2023. The military-ruled landlocked states have severed defense ties with Paris, citing meddling and the failure of its soldiers to quell jihadist violence in the Sahel despite their engagement for more than a decade.

READ MORE: West African bloc finds mediator for talks with Sahel breakaways

ECOWAS denies the allegations and has since attempted to persuade Bamako, Niamey, and Ouagadougou to rethink their decision, warning that their breakaway could undermine free trade and movement within the region. In February, the bloc lifted economic and travel sanctions against the three member states and later appointed Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Togolese counterpart, Faure Gnassingbe, to negotiate the return of the Sahel leaders.

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In a statement on Friday, the three former French colonies, who have set up their own union, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), insisted that their decision to leave ECOWAS is “irreversible.” However, Assimi Goita, the chairman of the AES and Mali’s military ruler, issued a separate statement on Saturday promising that ECOWAS citizens will be able to “enter, circulate, reside, establish, and leave the territory” of the new grouping without a visa, despite their departure.

On Sunday, ECOWAS commission chairman Touray described the “impending exit” of the military regimes as “disheartening.” He announced that the authority has decided to extend the mandate of mediators “up to the end of the transition period to bring the three member countries back to ECOWAS.”