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The Sahel alliance now has a passport, a bank and an army — but not yet peace

Sahel confederation West Africa
Woven emblem of the Alliance of Sahel States in the colours of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger
Barke11 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Sahel alliance now has a passport, a bank and an army — but not yet peace

The news

The Alliance of Sahel States has built a confederation at speed: a rotating presidency, a joint biometric passport, an investment bank capitalised at 500 billion CFA francs and a unified force planned at 5,000 troops — while trading travel bans with Washington and fencing diplomatically with Algiers.

The KemetLeads take

Sovereignty infrastructure is going up fast; accountability infrastructure is not. Sankara's heirs have the flags and the anthems. The question that matters is narrower: are villages around Gao and Kidal safer this year than last? That — not the summitry — is the metric.

Still moving
Update August 24 — The Confederal Parliament — 45 members, 15 per state — was installed in Niamey.
What to watch

Whether the unified force actually deploys around Gao and Kidal, and what the Niamey parliament passes first.

SourcesallAfrica on the unified force · Biometric Update on the passport · IPA, “Seven Fronts”, 2 Sep

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