“Chart a new path for African integration”

The three states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have founded the Alliance of Sahel States, AES, in a bid to advance joint struggle against terrorism and pursue regional integration.

We spoke to Mali’s foreign minister, Abdoulaye Diop, about the alliance’s foreign policy and reactions on the African continent, during the diplomacy forum of Antalya.

The establishment of the alliance of Sahel states, how did this affect Mali’s and the other states’ foreign policy, foreign relations?

For us, this is an opportunity. Today the alliance of Sahel state, the confederation, is a geopolitical reality and one of the key pillars of the confederation is exactly to speak with one voice to have a coordinated diplomacy. You have seen recently at the UN Security Council the ambassador of Mali has made a statement on the discussion on the fight against terrorism on behalf of the entire confederation, on behalf of Burkina and Niger.

And more and more today we are here in Antalya, still speaking, many of us are speaking, but the voice is the same. Last week you have seen us in Russia. We have been received by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as part of the first consultation between the AES and Russia on the political issues, which is the recognition of the political reality and the need to engage us. So, in all the places, we see ourselves as a force for good.

We want to establish friendly relationships. We want to have an engagement with all partners. We just need every partner to respect our sovereignty, to respect the strategic choices and the political choice of our country and to take into account the needs of our country. If that is followed, I think we are open to have an engagement with many countries around the globe, including Türkiye, China, others and Western countries as well.

How is the perception inside Africa towards the alliance?

For me, the perception is positive. Of course, at the beginning people didn’t understand. More and more people are coming to understand that what brought us together is an existential threat, fighting terrorism, fighting the military intervention in our country. But we use this is also as an opportunity to strengthen the economic ties, to promote an integration of the people, because most of African integration organizations failed to promote the integration of the people, which we are trying to promote.

And people also understand that we are willing to cut the colonial ties of our country, which has been a burden, and that we are using this. And many people in Africa relate to our fight because we think that the true independence is ourselves to take ownership of our country, to take ownership of the challenges. We see that, even in some governments, there are issues of perception. But across Africa we see how people, Pan-African, African ordinary people are responding to the fight of our country for dignity, for respect of our sovereignty, for ownership. There is this mental change, because many are portraying our country to say we are a poor country. We think that is the mental poverty instead.

But our countries are endowed with important human resources, natural resources, water resources, mineral resources.

What we need is only having the capacity to transform those to the benefit of our people and to establish productive and meaningful partnership for that. So, for us, we are seeing many governments and many people across the continent looking differently at what we are doing, and we hope that we can chart a new path for African integration.