Central Sahel: An Equation of Crises for a Sum of Paradoxes
by Mireille Eza
Author: Mireille Eza
Source: The African Geopolitical ATLAS 2025: Conflicting information, conflicted realities
Publisher: Stake Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.63542/oahq6746/
Document Type: Book Chapter
Publication date: May 5, 2025
Keywords: Sahel security; sovereignty; disinformation; African geopolitics; military coups; West Africa politics; post-colonialism
ABSTRACT - Taking a nuanced view of the current state of the Sahel region is a challenge. Everything and its opposite have been written, shown, explained, and commented upon. However, this flood of news and analysis has not helped to resolve a chronic, multifaceted crisis that is now spreading like an oil stain, affecting the dozen or so countries crossed or bordered by the Sahel. The threat is threefold: transnational jihadism, civil war, and the partition of already fragile states, annihilating 60 years of post-independence efforts.
The overlap of various layers of conflict in the Sahel since the late 1970s makes it particularly challenging to understand the issues related to disinformation. It requires adopting a multidimensional approach, accounting for internal security issues, sustainable economic and human development challenges, and the freedom of expression and information. Today, disinformation is often presented as the exclusive deed of opportunistic manipulators with destabilising intentions (Africa Centre For Strategic Studies 2024). A tool of influence, power, and positioning, designed and exploited by various stakeholders depending on their immediate interests, disinformation allows for the shaping of perceptions and legitimisation of a specific discourse to trigger targeted actions (Roberts and Karekwaivanane 2024). The aim is to achieve a political and ideological orientation while discrediting competing or opposing positions. In this respect, both information and disinformation have historically and structurally shaped thought and strategic action on the national and international stage.
MIREILLE EZA is a lawyer and diplomat by profession, an international cooperation practitioner, and a deeply committed pan-Africanist thinker. Following her career in Dakar, where she coordinated programmes on good governance for the UNDP, ECA, UNESCO and IAD, and other notable organisations, she brought her expertise to the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie (APF) as Director of the NORIA International Parliamentary Cooperation program. Mireille actively monitors the revolutions taking place in the central Sahel countries and is concerned by the contradictions they express. She sees these upheavals as the source of dynamics that should concern and mobilise the whole of West Africa.
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