While two extraordinary ECOWAS and WAEMU summits devoted to Mali will be held in Accra on Sunday, the Malian transitional authorities and the international community have started a standoff. Who will win?
The Malian dossier is undoubtedly one of the hottest at the start of 2022, for Africa. The military junta, which took power in August 2020, has been in the sights of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) since last May.
This Sunday, the heads of state of ECOWAS will meet at a summit, while the presidents of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (Uemoa) also planned to meet.
The objective of these two high-level meetings will be to decide on the roadmap of the transitional authorities in Mali. Following the National Refoundation Conference which took place last December, Mali's President Assimi Goïta has announced that he wants a five-year transition. During the Assises, there was talk of a transition lasting between six months and five years.
But Assimi Goïta believes that the return of stability in Mali requires the maximum time. And this in order to be able to organize a constitutional referendum, legislative elections and above all to eliminate the security threat, before the country votes for its new head of state.
We are therefore heading inexorably towards a confrontation between Mali and ECOWAS. Assimi Goïta knows full well that, although Mali risks going to clash, especially after the tensions between his country and the sub-regional organization, ECOWAS cannot afford to leave Mali on the sidelines for too long.
The importance of Mali for ECOWAS
Mali is not a unique case. Another country has come out of the ranks of the "union of heads of state" - the nickname given to ECOWAS by the Bissau-Guinean president Umaro Sissoco Embaló -: Guinea. Guinean putschists, headed by President Mamady Doumbouya, demand "at least two years" before the organization of a poll. And the Guinean soldier, like Assimi Goïta, refuses to allow his conduct to be dictated by the international community.
Except that Mali is not Guinea. In Bamako, ECOWAS is not alone: France and its Western allies are indeed opposed to Russia and Mali. However, for the West African bloc, this break with Bamako does not suit the economic interests of the biggest detractors of Goïta and his government. Mali remains, after all, one of the largest export markets for neighboring countries. And despite France's hostile statements towards Bamako, the heads of state of ECOWAS have been able to remain very moderate, with a few exceptions.
This is the case, for example, of the presidents of Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso, Alassane Ouattara and Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. For Ouattara, Malian trade represents $ 800 million per year, or a quarter of Côte d'Ivoire's trade surplus in 2019 and 2020. For Kaboré, the common borders with Mali are the operating ground for terrorist organizations. of the region. And without cooperation with Mali, Burkina Faso would be even more abandoned than it already is by neighboring countries.
Ecowas at the service of France?
Difficult today to find the balance between maintaining cordiality between Bamako and the other African capitals, and the artifice of an agreement with Paris.
On the French side, it is especially the Russian military intervention that worries. The latter took on a more official form. After Malian authorities denied any deployment of Wagner, military instructors from the Russian army appeared in Timbuktu in northern Mali.
A military cooperation between Mali and Russia much more assumed by Bamako, from now on. "We have received new planes and military equipment" from the Russians, the Malian army spokesman told Reuters on Thursday. “It costs less to train in their use on site than there (in Russia, editor's note). What's the problem ? », Asks the military official.
What, first of all, cut short the at least pessimistic analyzes of the French media on the arrival of the Wagner group in Mali. Especially since, in the future, Mali should benefit from increasingly strong Russian diplomatic and military support.
What if, in the end, the only party to be in bad shape during the summits on Mali were the horde of African heads of state, who seem to have become the spokespersons for France?
Because, with the ECOWAS which continues to lose its credibility as well as be a subordinate of the Quai d'Orsay, being part of the "union of heads of state" is no longer as comfortable as it once was. What position will West African presidents take up against an Assimi Goïta who seems to be going it alone… or almost?