'Silencing the guns' in the Sahel region?

Abstract

In February 2022, France's President Emmanuel Macron announced that French forces would be exiting Mali, where they have been fighting violent extremists since 2013. France would be redeploying its troops in neighbouring Niger, another former French colony beset with violent extremism, and the biggest supplier of uranium that is fuelling France's nuclear power stations. However, increased militarisation in the Sahel region has failed to stem attacks by extremist groups. In a 2019 article in Africa Insight, Cheryl Hendricks, then Executive Director of the HSRC's Africa Institute of South Africa, and Tochukwu Omenma of the University of Nigeria argued that a focus on military tactics has in fact been counter-productive to the AU's aim of 'silencing the guns' in this region. Recent developments in the region support this view.