Three military-ruled countries have officially withdrawn from the West African regional alliance known as ECOWAS, the bloc said on Wednesday, defying pressure from the group to return the countries to civilian democratic rule.
The alliance, the Economic Community of West African States, offers its members visa-free travel, favorable trade tariffs and access to a $702 billion market for the region’s 400 million people. The three nations — Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — announced their intention to leave last year.
Negotiations between their leaders and the bloc then failed to reach an agreement that would keep them in. Instead, the three juntas are forging ahead with their own grouping, the Alliance of Sahelian States, A.E.S. by its French acronym, and have created a military force of 5,000 troops.
The three juntas presented their exit as essential for their sovereignty and portrayed the alliance as a neocolonialist force carrying out a foreign agenda.
“ECOWAS and the jihadists are the same,” Assimi Goïta, Mali’s president, said on Jan. 10, referring to the extremists who have destabilized a vast area of the Sahel, the arid belt that stretches coast to coast below the Sahara. “The only difference is that some carry weapons and others do not.”
Their withdrawal will weaken ECOWAS, which celebrates its 50th year this May and had 16 members at its founding. It will now have only 12: Mauritania left in 2000. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, though not the most populous or economically strong countries in the region, account for more than half the alliance’s 1.9 million square miles and 17 percent of its 400 million population.
The alliance said in a statement that it would leave the doors open for the juntas to return.
But analysts say that the three exiting countries stand to suffer the most, including through higher prices, shortages of food supplies and political isolation.
Niger shares a 1,000-mile border with Nigeria and relies on its much richer and populous neighbor for 80 percent of its trade. Relations have become strained in recent months: Niger has accused Nigeria, whose president is the current chair of ECOWAS, of supporting jihadist groups to attack it.
Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso account for half of the world’s terrorism-related deaths, and the region overtook the Middle East last year to become the global epicenter of terrorism, according to a recent report by Global Terrorism Index. Some of the military juntas used the insecurity as a justification for seizing power, even though attacks have increased under their rule.
ECOWAS responded to the coups with biting economic sanctions, and it has threatened a military intervention to restore civilian rule in Niger. But it was accused of having double standards for not punishing civilian leaders who cause political instability by postponing elections or changing their country’s constitutions to stay in power longer.
A wave of coups has hit Africa in recent years, with nine military takeovers from 2020 to 2023 — a number unseen in decades. Most of them have been in West Africa.
In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the juntas refused to yield to ECOWAS’s demands to hand over power. The sanctions, which were backed by Britain, the European Union and the United States, were eventually lifted, and the alliance tried to push for dialogue with the three countries, but the juntas were not persuaded.
“They want to be let alone, not to be dictated how to run their countries or to be forced to hold elections,” Fahiraman Rodrigue Koné, the Sahel project manager at the Institute for Security Studies, a regional think tank, said in a telephone interview.
The three juntas have lately severed ties with some of their key traditional partners, ending military cooperation with France and the United States, and imposing new mining laws and taxes to maximize revenue from their ailing economies.
They have strengthened their cooperation with Russia, which provides them with weapons and mercenaries. And they have secured new contracts for China to run mining operations that were previously controlled by Western companies and to supply arms, according to local media outlets. Turkey, offering itself as an alternative, has also provided drones and mercenaries to Niger, state media said.
On Tuesday, protesters took to the streets in the three exiting countries’ capitals to celebrate the withdrawal. But analysts said that most people in these countries did not support the juntas’ decision to leave.
“Critical voices are suppressed,” said Gilles Yabi, the founder and executive director of the West Africa Citizen Think Tank.
Across the three countries, the human rights situation has sharply deteriorated, with thousands of civilians killed by the military and state-backed militias last year alone, according to rights groups.
But the Sahelian juntas have lately become somewhat less isolated. Ghana’s new president has appointed a special envoy to their new alliance, and Togo has signaled that it may apply for membership.
