The Sahel Crisis

Militant activity in the western Sahel

The Sahel Crisis is an ongoing and complex political crisis in Sahel region of Africa, the lands running all along the southern rim of the Sahara Desert where the land is arid and desert-like, though where agriculture and a degree of societal development have still been possible over the centuries. This is a string of inter-connected countries from Mauritania in the west all the way east to Sudan via Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. The crisis began in Mali in 2012 following a rebellion amongst the Tuareg people there. It has since involved extensive conflicts and coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Sudan has been wracked by conflict throughout the twenty-first century going back to the Darfur Conflict in the 2000s and 2010s. It exploded into a renewed civil war in 2023. Finally, Chad has been impacted by the wider Lake Chad Basin Crisis that is a by-product of the Boko Haram Insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria. The crisis has been fueled by multiple factors, including a spillover of the Arab Spring south of the Sahara; Russian interference in the region; tribal and religious tensions; and social and economic problems wrought by climate change and desertification. The crisis has displaced millions across the Sahel region, many internally within their own countries, though over a million people have become international refugees. Many of these have traversed over the Sahara and become part of the European Union migration crisis.

The Sahel Crisis chronology of eventsThe Sahel Crisis chronology of events

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Modibo Keita

The Sahel region has, like many parts of Africa in the post-colonial period, gone through multiple political and military crises. For instance, in Mali two different dictators controlled the country after independence was acquired from France in 1960. These were Modibo Keita and Moussa Traore, both of whom were eventually ousted in coups in 1968 and 1991. Throughout these decades tribal tensions were prevalent as the Tuareg people opposed the central government. Niger was ruled by the military between 1974 and 1991 and again in the late 1990s. Sudan has had the most violent history and has been wracked by civil wars and regional separatism ever since independence from Britain in 1956. This eventually led to South Sudan becoming an independent nation in 2011 after multiple civil wars and other regional conflict in Darfur and elsewhere in what was then Africa’s largest country. However, as serious as these issues were, they were unfortunately replicated across most of post-colonial Africa between the 1960s and 1990s.

Many of these African conflicts and dictatorships were partly a result of the Cold War, as the United States had frequently been willing to support military strongmen across the continent if they remained staunch supporters of the US. In other cases the civil wars were fueled by alleged Marxist-Leninist groups supported by the Soviet Union. Hence, in the 1990s and 2000s, once the Cold War ended and the brief Pax Americana descended across the world, there was a wave of stabilization across the continent and democracies flourished again in many countries. What marks the Sahel Crisis as distinct from past African conflicts is that while many countries like the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Gabon and Rwanda are developing well, albeit sometimes under illiberal democracies, the Sahel region has gone backwards in the twenty-first century, especially since 2012.

Abdourahamane Tchiani

The causes of the Sahel Crisis are multi-faceted. For starters, climate change-related desertification is intensifying competition for land and resources in these countries as the Sahara Desert swallows up what was once agricultural land or at least land that could support some livestock. 2012, the year the crisis commenced, witnessed an extensive drought across the Sahel. Added to this, the region has longstanding tribal conflicts, notably related to the position of the Tuareg people in Mali and Niger. Thirdly, the Arab Spring that began in the Maghreb to the north of the Sahara Desert at the very end of 2010, spilled over politically to the south of the Desert in 2012. Fourthly, there is an issue here with Islamic fundamentalism, particularly so with Boko Haram in Nigeria, who have destabilized Niger and Chad from their base in north-eastern Nigeria. Finally, Russia has compounded these issues as it has sought greater regional influence by supporting certain groups in various countries, even as France’s post-colonial influence in the region has evaporated.

The first country this manifested in was Mali when a major new civil war began there in 2012. Tuareg rebels seized control of the north of the country that April. In the summer the war here generated international headlines when a wave of iconoclasm led to the destruction of the precious heritage of the great medieval city of Timbuktu. Mali remained the epicenter of the Sahel Crisis for years to come, although there were many additional issues across the region, notably the spillover of the Libyan Civil Wars into Chad and the Boko Haram insurgency into Chad and Niger. Things intensified further in 2022 and 2023. There were two separate coups in Burkina Faso in 2022. A coup in Niger in 2023 led to the rise to power of general Abdourahamane Tchiani. This followed form earlier coups there and in Chad in 2021. It was also in 2023 that a new Sudanese Civil War broke out. Entering the second half of the 2020s these conflicts are still underway and have mingled together to form a transnational conflict running for thousands of kilometers across the southern rim of the Sahara Desert.

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Extent of migration and demographic impact of the Sahel CrisisExtent of migration and demographic impact of the Sahel Crisis

Sudanese civil war refugees

The Sahel Crisis has led to the displacement of over three million people in Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, though that number was an approximation in 2025. Nobody can be sure of the actual number and it continues to grow, especially in Sudan where the civil war has become more violent. Of these, approximately 65% are internally displaced within their own countries. A million or more are internationally displaced. Of these, a minority have made it over the Sahara Desert to the Mediterranean and have joined the exodus of people into Europe since the mid-2010s fleeing other conflicts like the Syrian Civil War. However, while these have generated the most international headlines, the reality is that the majority of the refugees from the Sahel Crisis have actually sought sanctuary in neighboring countries, notably Mauritania (a Sahel country not as badly impacted as the others), Nigeria or the small nations of the Gulf of Guinea like Ghana, Togo and Benin. There were, for instance, a reported 127,000 Burkinabe people in the countries along the Gulf of Guinea in 2025. Thus, in years or decades to come many people in countries as geographically disparate as Italy, South Africa and Ghana will have an ancestor who fled from the Sahel region as part of the crisis there since 2012.

See alsoSee also

• European Union migration crisis
• Arab Spring
• Boko Haram insurgency
• West African ethnicity
• West African surnames
• Scramble for Africa
• Sub-Saharan emigration to Europe
• Sub-Saharan settlement in France
• Sub-Saharan emigration to South Africa

Explore more about the Sahel CrisisExplore more about the Sahel Crisis

• The Sahel Refugee Crisis at The European Commission
• Violent Conflict in the Sahel at the Council ofn Foreign Relations
• China's Sahel Gamble Falters as Insurgencies Rage at The Diplomat
• Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) at Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect
• Russia in Africa: Private Military Proxies in the Sahel at Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
• The Lake Chad Basin Could Power Growth Instead of Conflict at The Atlantic Council

References

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