Ten years after the start of the Malian crisis, political and security instability in the Sahel have changed in scale and nature, and spilled over across national frontiers. The border region between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has become the new epicentre of insecurity. The comeback of military actors on the political scene, and the support provided by large parts of the population to post-coup military juntas is evidence of poor governance and a severe deterioration in the legitimacy of elected authorities. In this complex scenario, the initiatives of external partners affect regional balances, making the Sahel a major theatre for power competition. How did the crisis evolve over the past decade? What are the main drivers behind local, regional and international dynamics? What prospects for regional stability?

As the so-called Arab Spring has slid into political uncertainty, lingering insecurity and civil conflict, European and American initial enthusiasm for anti-authoritarian protests has given way to growing concerns that revolutionary turmoil in North Africa may in fact have exposed the West to new risks. Critical in cementing this conviction has been the realisation that developments originated from Arab Mediterranean countries and spread to the Sahel have now such a potential to affect Western security and interests as to warrant even military intervention, as France’s operation in Mali attests. EU and US involvement in fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa had already laid bare the nexus between their security interests and protracted crises in sub-Saharan Africa. But the new centrality acquired by the Sahel after the Arab uprisings – particularly after Libya’s civil war – has elevated this nexus to a new, larger dimension. The centre of gravity of Europe’s security may be swinging to Africa, encompassing a wide portion of the continental landmass extending south of Mediterranean coastal states. The recrudescence of the terrorist threat from Mali to Algeria might pave the way to an American pivot to Africa, thus requiring fresh thinking on how the European Union and the United States can better collaborate with each other and with relevant regional actors.

This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The crisis in the Sahel is serious and multidimensional, and if it continues unabated it could have consequences far beyond the region. As the states of the region are too poor and weak to deal with this on their own, international support is needed. the current international emphasis on the G5 Sahel should change from a focus on more 'boots on the ground' to support for the development agenda of this embryonic international organisation. The Sahel needs a functioning regional framework and the G5 Sahel has some potential; but the only way to harvest this potential is to help fine-tune it to address the underlying causes of conflict. Improving security conditions in the Sahel is absolutely essential; but neither the inhabitants of the region nor the external stakeholders will find security exclusively through military means. The correct priorities must be set. And at the heart of this there must be an improvement in living conditions and a new system of governance that makes it much less possible for jihadist insurgents to appropriate local land-rights conflicts.

Long on the margins of both scholarly and policy concerns, the countries of the West African Sahel have recently attracted world attention, primarily as a key battleground in the global 'war on terror'. This book moves beyond this narrow focus, providing a multidimensional and interdisciplinary assessment of the region in all of its complexity. The focus is on the six countries at the heart of the Sahelian geographic space: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Collectively, the chapters explore the commonalities and interconnections that link these countries and their fates, while also underscoring their diversity and the variations in their current realities. The Sahel today is at an important crossroads, under multiple pressures of diverse kinds: environmental, political, demographic, and economic, as well as rapidly changing social and religious dynamics. It is also marked by striking dynamism and experimentation, drawing on a long history of innovation and cultural transfer. In many ways the Sahel is today on the cutting edge of grand natural experiments exploring how humans will adapt to climate change, to technological innovation, to the global movement of populations and the restructuring of world politics, to urbanization, social change, and rapid demographic growth, and to inter-religious contact. The region is a weathervane on the front lines of the forces of global change. In nine thematic sections, the chapters in this book offer holistic analyses of the key forces shaping the region. Including scholars based in Africa, Europe, and the United States, the authors represent an exceptional breadth and depth of expertise on the Sahel.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

Over the past decade, the G5 Sahel countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad) have seen their security situation substantially worsen, following a combination of political instability, jihadist insurgencies and the proliferation of local militias. To better capture the multifaceted nature of conflict and political violence in the G5 Sahel region, this study applies the conflict index methodology developed by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) to the second-level administrative entities within each country between 2018 and 2023. The outcome of this temporally and spatially refined conflict profile is projected in several tables, graphs and maps, which indicate: (i) that political violence has intensified over the period considered; (ii) that most of the conflict events were concentrated in the tri state border area of Liptako-Gourma; and (iii) that political violence is far from uniform across its underlying dimensions, suggesting that different strategies might be needed to restore security. In methodological terms and using the results from the temporal analysis, this study also introduces a distinction between protracted and transient forms of political violence, which provides additional insight to the index dimensions of deadliness, danger, diffusion, and fragmentation.

This book explains the structure and geographical and organisational mobility of criminal and migratory movements in the Sahara and the Sahel with a view to helping establish better development strategies for the region.