West Africa’s Sahel region in times of rupture and shifting global political orders

Thursday 25 May 2023, 15.15-17.30
DIIS ∙ Danish Institute for International Studies & CAS ∙ The Centre of African Studies, Copenhagen University
Søren Kierkegaard auditorium, South Campus, Copenhagen University
Karen Blixens Plads 16
2300 Copenhagen S

West Africa has recently witnessed a number of military coups and uprisings. Since 2020, new military leaders have overthrown the presidents of Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), Guinea (September 2021), and Burkina Faso (January and September 2022).

In Burkina Faso and Mali, the inability of the former regimes to deal with spiraling insecurity and a growing jihadist insurgency have been important drivers of democratic unrest.

While insecurity has been deepening and spreading after over a decade of western-led military and civilian operations to counter terrorism and instability in Mali and the broader Sahel, still more West African countries are renewing ties with Russia.

While often portrayed by policy makers and Western media as an unfavorable ‘coup epidemic’ in a renewed ‘scramble for Africa’ in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the series of coup d’états are expressions of public protest and a call for an anticolonial and less western dominated global order.

These political changes occur simultaneously with growing regional insecurity where armed state and non-state actors are escalating violence with severe human consequences including killings of civilians and forced migration. The recurrent Sahelian security challenges continue to be nourished by ongoing militant jihadists struggle, weapons proliferation, drug and human smuggling in the Sahel and in the Maghreb.

To better understand these volatile dynamics and their geographical dimensions, this seminar organized by Centre of African Studies (University of Copenhagen) and the Danish Institute for International Studies brings together prominent speakers to discuss these important developments from global, regional and national perspectives.

PROGRAMME

15.15-15.30: Welcome and Opening remarks:

Karen Lauterbach, CAS and Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde, DIIS

15.30-15:50: West Africa’s Politics of Coups and the Role of Regional Actors

Speaker: Kamissa Camara, University of Oxford

15.50-16.10: Changing political orders: The relationship between Mali and France

Speaker: Gabriella Körling, Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI)

16.10-16.30: The crime-terror nexus in Sahel borderlands

Speaker: Promise Frank Ejiofor, University of Cambridge

16.30-16.50: Religious movements and Radicalization in the Sahel

Speaker: Bulama Bukarti, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

16.50-17.10: Discussants

Eric Komlavi, RUC, Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde, DIIS

17.10-17.30: Final discussion, questions from the audience

17.30-18.30: Reception

The seminar will be chaired by Karen Lauterbach (CAS).

More info and registration here: https://www.diis.dk/en/node/26338/