In the early morning of July 26, 2023, Niger’s Presidential Guard stormed the Presidential Palace in Niamey and detained the democratically elected head of state, Mohamed Bazoum. What followed was a high-intensity standoff between Niger’s coup leaders and the regional bloc of which it was a member—the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The leadership of ECOWAS threatened a military intervention to restore democratic rule if President Bazoum was not reinstated by August 6. Yet the deadline passed without incident, and over the months that followed a historic split emerged as Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, all coup-afflicted ECOWAS states, formed a mutual defense pact dubbed the Alliance of Sahel States (Alliance des États du Sahel or AES) in opposition to ECOWAS’ mandate. In January 2024, the three countries announced their intent to formally withdraw from the bloc.

After a mandatory one-year transition period, the AES countries finalized their withdrawal from ECOWAS on January 29 of this year. Despite long-term ambitions, the AES as a regional bloc faces an uncertain future. All three member countries are battling terrorist insurgencies in addition to severe climate threats and various levels of isolation from regional partners like ECOWAS, the African Union, and former allies in Europe. The bloc recently created a joint military force of 5,000 troops, yet it remains significantly smaller than the 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission that left the region in 2023. To fill the gap, the AES countries are partnering with mercenary corps such as Russia’s Wagner Group——an approach that has yielded mixed results at best. Moscow recently subsumed the Wagner Group’s regional operations into the more integrated Africa Corps, a division under more direct supervision of the Russian Ministry of Defence—but reports from June 2025 indicate the Africa Corps continues a pattern of mass atrocities associated with the Wagner Group’s operations in Mali.

Nevertheless, an effective response to the terrorist threat permeating the borders of the AES is urgently needed. At the same time, AES leaders cannot lose sight of the institutional frameworks required to entrench the alliance and ensure longer-term regional stability. Striking the balance between these two priorities is a task that will test the alliance’s cohesion, political will, and ability to deliver security and governance where previous regional efforts have fallen short. Failure to balance security and structural priorities will undermine the very metrics the AES regimes use to legitimize their own rule and cast the survival of the alliance into doubt.

 Though the coup leaders may feel victorious after successfully staving off ECOWAS’ threat of military intervention in 2023, the path toward securing their rule remains a difficult one. A decades-long Islamist insurgency has taken advantage of the recent instability to begin formalizing control over considerable swaths of the Central Sahel. Alongside the Islamist insurgency, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have all experienced declines in foreign investment, restricted access to offshore funds, and reduced intra-regional trade. As a result, they are experiencing currency destabilization and high rates of inflation.

Given this murky financial and security outlook, the credibility of AES countries rests in large part on their ability to deal with the separatist threats within their borders. This does not bode well for the new regimes: about half of Burkina Faso is beyond government control, and last summer, dozens of soldiers from the Malian government and Russia’s Wagner Group were killed in northern Mali in a devastating ambush by Tuareg rebels. In 2024, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) aggregated reports of political violence in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to indicate that insecurity in the Sahel is worse than ever. If military leaders in AES countries seized power under the pretext of restoring safety and order, they are failing their claimed mandates. Framing their takeovers as anti-imperial or anti-Western will do little to assuage citizens’ concerns in the long term. Pledges to invest in rural agriculture and mineral refining may offer additional sources of legitimacy but stand to make little headway amid pervasive insecurity. A Burkinabè initiative to distribute free tractors to farmers, for example, reads more as economic populism than genuine agricultural reform, given the established position of jihadist groups in the country’s rural farming regions.

As a regional bloc, the AES is a reflection of the collective effort of the AES countries to entrench their regimes. However, the success of this effort will depend on their ability to become financially independent from the regional communities they have broken away from. Most immediately, that means ECOWAS, but the alliance has increasingly shunned most forms of multilateralism in favor of retrenchment and greater reliance on its ally, Russia. Recent trade initiatives with Morocco and China present alternative sources of partnership but face a long road to implementation amid conflicting priorities and regional insecurity. More crucially, such agreements cannot function as a replacement for the institutional structures needed to stabilize governance in the Sahel. The AES has stated its intention to establish a shared investment bank, a common market, and a monetary union, but without international support and a dramatic reduction in violence across the region, these aspirations feel increasingly remote. And yet, the institution-building required to make these multinational efforts effective is as critical to the alliance’s survival as it is difficult to implement.

A discussion of the origins of similar regional organizations provides a helpful point of comparison for the challenges that lie ahead for the AES. The East African Community (EAC) first emerged in the 1960s as a means of promoting cooperation between Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. While today the EAC is an integral pillar of African multilateralism, the original iteration faced disparities in development, ideological differences, and weak institutional frameworks that led to its collapse after just a decade. It was only with the establishment of the 1993 Tripartite Commission for East African Cooperation that the involved parties began reconstituting the EAC as it exists today.

The history of the EAC presents a helpful but sobering point of comparison for the AES: a crucial component of the EAC’s success was the improved security environment around the time of its revival in 2000. EAC leaders learned much from the collapse of their first attempt and laid out concrete plans for the formation of a secretariat, a legislative assembly, and a court of justice in their 1999 re-establishment treaty. By contrast, international isolation, a deteriorating security environment, and a volatile political climate present challenges to the AES that the EAC did not face to the same degree in its second incarnation.

 If the history of the EAC’s development is any barometer, until AES governments can address insecurity in the Sahel, we should not expect significant progress toward the regional bloc’s stated economic and social goals. The coup leaders must be clear-headed about this reality. At the same time, they must recognize the urgency of transitioning the alliance from a reactive military coalition to a lasting regional institution—and the challenge this transition poses.

Given this, the G5 Sahel presents an interesting parallel to the AES, as both alliances are security-focused in their origins. The G5 Sahel, however—an alliance formed by the governments of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger in 2014—subsequently struggled to pivot toward governance and broader institutionalization. While the G5 Sahel was primarily intended as a counterterrorism force, it had clearly stated intentions of catalyzing economic development and cooperation that extended beyond military matters. Nevertheless, the narrow scope of its operations in the short term meant that minimal resources were dedicated to other aspects of its mandate. Once it became clear the countries’ efforts were failing to bring greater security to the region, confidence in the alliance faltered. The G5 Sahel was additionally heavily reliant on Western assistance at the expense of member state coordination and local involvement in counterterrorism operations, much in the same way as the AES relies on assistance from Russia.

The examples of the EAC and the G5 Sahel show that regional blocs that balance immediate security needs with broader goals of economic and political integration and back them up with realistic implementation plans are the ones that tend to see success. Additionally, there must be a balance between transactional foreign partnerships and those that aim to be more sustainable and consistent over the long term. Failure to open channels for dialogue with their neighbors further isolates the junta leaders and leaves a diplomatic and security vacuum that paves the way for greater regional instability. Given that the Sahel sits at the epicenter of terrorism in Africa, if not the world, such a course of action is detrimental to all with a stake in the stability of the region.

As the AES grapples with the task of institutionalizing governance and addressing insecurity, its leaders must be clear-eyed about their partners and the challenges that lie ahead. Their departure from ECOWAS was fueled by idealism and revolutionary spirit, but if the AES is to be successful in facilitating its stated objectives and meeting the needs of its members, it must be grounded in pragmatism and compromise. AES leaders must urgently prioritize the existential security threat within their borders, at the same time as they take concrete, immediate measures toward the establishment of resilient institutions of governance.

If the experiences of other African multilateral institutions are instructive, then it is unlikely AES will be able to achieve this independently; the alliance will have to look beyond transactional mercenary contracts and mining licenses to engage meaningfully and sustainably with regional partners. Failure to do so will lead the AES down the path of failed organizations like the G5 Sahel, or worse.