cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11405210

The foreign ministers of Niger and Mali have accused neighbouring countries of sponsoring terrorism, but said they were willing to cooperate on some matters with the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, from which they formally split last year.

The accusations, made on the sidelines of a security forum in Diamniadio, Senegal, late on Monday, underscore regional rifts in West Africa that can complicate efforts to curb jihadist violence across the Sahel, a semi-arid belt of land stretching across Africa.

Mali, Niger and neighbouring Burkina Faso have been battling jihadist insurgencies for over a decade. All three countries are led by military governments which seized power in coups and then broke away from ECOWAS to form their own bloc, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

There are neighbouring countries that are currently harbouring terrorist groups, supporting terrorist groups, or frequently receiving hostile forces that carry out operations against us, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told Reuters.

He declined to name which neighbours he was referring to but added that foreign powers outside the region were also involved. He said Ukrainian mercenaries had attacked Mali and claimed responsibility, in an apparent reference to comments by a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) about fighting in northern Mali in 2024. Ukraine said at the time there was no evidence that it had played a role in the fighting. It has since denied supplying drones to rebels in the north of Mali.

Tensions have also been high between Mali and Mauritania in recent weeks, with Mali claiming two of its soldiers were held by armed groups across the border, and Mauritania saying it was offended by the claim, which it denied.

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Niger’s Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare said in a speech at the forum that many countries seeking to cooperate with Niger on counterterrorism are also “fuelling, financing and sustaining” terrorism in the country. He told Reuters he was referring to France. The French foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Niger’s military ruler Abdourahamane Tiani in January blamed French, Benin and Ivory Coast presidents for sponsoring an attack on the country’s international airport, an accusation he made without offering any evidence.

The current chairman of ECOWAS, Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, appealed to the AES states to either rejoin the regional bloc or collaborate more with it. But Mali’s Diop told Reuters that “Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, politically speaking, have withdrawn from ECOWAS.”

Our withdrawal is final, so there’s no point in saying we’re asking people to come back.

Nevertheless, Diop added that AES could maintain a constructive dialogue with ECOWAS on freedom of movement and preserving a common market.

About The Author

Ibrahim Traore visits women in agricultural production on International Women's Day. Photo: Burkina Faso Presidency

On April 17, 1996, military police in Eldorado dos Carajás, Brazil, killed 21 landless workers who were blocking a road to demand agrarian reform. They were members of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST). Since then, La Via Campesina has designated April 17 as the International Day of Peasant Struggle – a global day to honor those fighting for land, seeds, water, and food sovereignty, and to hold accountable those who profit from their dispossession.

As we observe the 30th anniversary of this day in Africa, we are compelled to pay closer attention to important developments in the Sahel region of our continent, where, when the terrorists arrived, the women of Burkina Faso hid seeds in their hair.

This is not a metaphor. It is also not improvisation. Before colonial borders were drawn across the Sahel, before cash crops displaced subsistence farming, and before structural adjustment dismantled public seed banks, the women of West Africa had long carried seeds on their bodies. Seeds were inherited – the record of generations of cultivated knowledge about which variety survived the dry season and which grew on degraded soil. Seed-keeping was a form of social reproduction as fundamental as any other, and women overwhelmingly carried it. That practice faded under colonial tax regimes, agribusiness inputs, and varieties designed not to be saved. Communities grew dependent on inputs they did not control.

Crisis brought it back. As armed groups (whose proliferation followed directly from NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya) swept through farming communities across the Sahel – burning fields, killing, and forcing hundreds of thousands from their land – Burkinabé women returned to what their grandmothers knew: concealing seeds beneath their hair. When the terrorists had gone, they brought the seeds out again. They planted once more. The act was both practical and political: what was preserved was not only food but also the cultivated knowledge that makes food sovereignty possible.

Land as weapon, seeds as resistance

Every year, 360,000 hectares of agricultural land are lost in Burkina Faso due to terrorism-driven displacement, climate change, and the cascading effects of a decade of instability. Peasants displaced from their villages either move to cities without support or try to rebuild their lives and livelihoods on unfamiliar, unsuitable, or equally threatened land.

Terrorism serves to weaken and fragment agricultural production. The displacement of Burkinabé peasants benefits those who seek to keep Africa reliant on food imports, international aid, and the “goodwill” of imperialism.

In response, peasant organizations, united under the Coalition for Surveillance of Biotechnological Activities (CVAB), have created an agroecological alternative to dependence on corporate inputs. Their opposition to GMOs and corporate biotechnology is based on structural issues, not sentiment: patented seed systems transfer control of Africa’s food supply to external actors (reflecting the logic of structural adjustment, but applied to agriculture). 

The state behind the seed

These issues are not new. They have been raised by the peasants and the organizations they have built for decades across the African continent. What, then, has changed under Ibrahim Traoré’s government? It is the scope of political possibilities. For the first time since Sankara, the agenda of peasant organizations – including food sovereignty, opposition to GMOs, and prioritizing locally produced food – has gained state support. The Agricultural Offensive launched in 2023 has redistributed tractors and inputs to farmers, redeployed agricultural engineers to rural regions, and achieved grain surpluses for two consecutive years. In his New Year’s address on December 31, 2025, Traoré declared that Burkina Faso had reached food self-sufficiency. In February 2026, the government established and nationalized five major agro-industrial complexes.

Importantly, the Alliance of Sahel States has established APSA-Sahel – the Alliance of Agricultural Seed Producers of the Sahel. Its clear mandate is to develop and distribute locally adapted, climate-resilient seeds; to build an indigenous regional seed market; and to end reliance on foreign seed imports that have left Sahelian farmers vulnerable for decades. The knowledge of locally adapted seed that the women of Burkina Faso have kept in their hair – which is irreplaceable – is now being formalized across three countries. The informal sector is becoming institutionalized.

April 17 and the African peasant

La Via Campesina’s call on April 17, 2025, highlighted that land, water, and territories are not commodities, and the act of conserving and exchanging traditional seeds should not be perpetually criminalized worldwide. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), adopted in 2018, affirms the collective rights of peasant communities over their seeds, land, and communal ways of life.

Food sovereignty, seed sovereignty, and environmental sovereignty are therefore strategic questions for the Africa Liberation struggle, commemorated on May 25 annually – not secondary concerns. In the Alliance of Sahel States, the fight over seeds is closely connected to the struggle for land, resources, and the right to influence development. It also puts the question of who the beneficiaries of these initiatives should be squarely on the table. In the spirit of April 17, the answer is clear: the Burkinabé, African and international peasantry must be the heartbeat of livelihoods in our communities and must therefore be at the center of the claims being made to sovereignty.

As Africa continues to fight for sovereignty and peasants strive for prosperity, there may be valuable lessons in the Burkinabé practice of preserving seed in women’s hair as a dignified symbol of the land (and continent) of the upright people.

Jonis Ghedi-Alasow is the Coordinator of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat.

The Confederation of Sahel States (CSS), comprising Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, has officially launched the Alliance of Agricultural Seed Producers of the Sahel (APSA-Sahel). The announcement was made by Burkina Faso’s Minister of Agriculture, marking a new chapter in the region’s pursuit of agricultural self-reliance and food sovereignty.

The newly formed alliance aims to produce and market high-quality seeds that are specifically adapted to the Sahel’s harsh climate. A key objective is to facilitate the free movement of seeds across member states, thereby fostering a more resilient and interconnected agricultural market.

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The Sahel faces numerous challenges, including a shortage of high-quality seed varieties, worsening climate conditions, and ongoing regional insecurity. However, APSA-Sahel leaders are undeterred and are planning the development of a comprehensive action plan to build an integrated seed market across the confederation.

This plan will outline strategies for seed certification, distribution networks, and regional research collaboration. For the Sahel, agricultural sovereignty is deeply intertwined with political and economic self-determination. By taking ownership of seed production and distribution.

The importance of seed sovereignty in the Sahel becomes even clearer when compared to ongoing debates in Nigeria, where the government has promoted genetically modified organisms (GMOs), often in partnership with international agribusinesses.

The controversy surrounding GMOs reached new heights in June 2024, following the launch of the Bill Gates-funded TELA GMO Maize in Nigeria. This triggered widespread concerns over food sovereignty, economic independence, and safety.

In contrast, APSA-Sahel represents a bottom-up approach, where local control, farmer participation, and ecological adaptation are prioritized. It aims to create an integrated, regional seed market that supports indigenous innovation and regional collaboration rather than dependency on foreign technologies and markets.

This vision mirrors a growing pan-African movement for food sovereignty, rejecting imposed agricultural models in favor of locally rooted, climate-resilient, and culturally appropriate solutions.

About The Author

The man is a preeminent source of regional terror against AES!

Bola Tinubu says terrorism in Nigeria, including the activities of Boko Haram, stems largely from instability in the Sahel region and the effects of climate change, framing the crisis as a spillover of regional conflict and environmental pressures.

This explanation is a long-standing narrative promoted by Western institutions, which links insecurity in the Lake Chad Basin and the wider Sahel to resource scarcity and cross-border insurgency while ignoring deeper geopolitical factors and documented claims tying the emergence and persistence of such groups to Western interventionist strategies. Bola Tinubu’s verbatim repetition of this narrative clearly shows where his loyalties lie and who shapes his policy direction.

Since late 2025, a network of fake social media accounts—including Scoop Africa, La Dépêche africaine, and La Voix du Faso—has been impersonating media outlets to spread disinformation targeting the Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger). A deepfake video purportedly from Burkina Faso’s RTB claimed the junta was deploying troops to Iran during the US‑Israel conflict; “RTB quickly disowned the clip on its Facebook page, but despite this it was shared thousands of times.” The accounts have also fabricated stories about Russia evacuating nationals from Mali, a fake sale of a Burkinabe power plant, and a fictional Russian vaccine trial. Many of the pages are traced to Côte d’Ivoire, but the operators remain unknown. Experts warn of “total informational chaos, where the population will no longer understand what is true or false.”

Announced a year ago, AES TV, the television channel of the Confederation of Sahel States (AES), was officially launched in Bamako, the Confederation's headquarters, in the presence of the three heads of state that make up the AES: General Assimi Goïta (Mali), General Abdourahamane Tiani (Niger), and Captain Ibrahim Traoré (Burkina Faso).

AES TV aims to become the Confederation's common media outlet, designed to improve public information, promote regional integration, and highlight the actions and public policies of member states.

It also aims to represent a unified voice for the Sahel on the regional and international stages.

Salif Sanogo has been appointed channel director, assisted by Sékou Tangara as deputy director. Both are Malian professionals with experience in audiovisual content management and production.

The management team will be responsible for ensuring the operational functioning of the television station, establishing editorial policy, and producing programs.

The channel is broadcast on CHANNEL 699 of the CANAL+ package.

Media experts from the three Confederation of Sahel States (AES) countries convened in Ouagadougou to strengthen cooperation against disinformation, following the recent launches of Radio La Voix du Liptako and AES TV. Burkina Faso’s minister of communication, P. Gilbert Ouédraogo, opened the conclave, noting “Nous avons fait les frais de ce que la désinformation et les fake news peuvent constituer comme dangers dans la marche engagée par nos dirigeants” (the dangers disinformation poses to the sovereignty effort). The meeting is expected to produce protocols for sharing information and content among public media of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, aiming to provide accurate information and counter false narratives.