How the Alliance of Sahel States is financing itself from outside the region and what has become of ECOWAS

Nearly two years after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formally severed ties with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the junta-led Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has built a financing model that leans heavily on partners outside West Africa even as it insists, on paper, that the confederation is self-funded by its three member states.

A charter built on self-reliance, a reality built on outside partners
The AES founding charter stipulates that financing of the confederation "shall be provided by contributions from the member states," and on March 28, 2025, Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey agreed to introduce a 0.5 percent import levy across the bloc to fund confederal institutions, including the AES Unified Force, a roughly 5,000-strong joint military contingent commanded by Burkinabe General Daouda Traoré. The levy, and a newly created AES development bank designed to finance regional infrastructure without recourse to the World Bank or the African Development Bank, are presented by the juntas as proof that the alliance has broken free of donor dependency the very weakness that hollowed out the earlier, Western-funded G5 Sahel force.

In practice, however, the AES has diversified rather than eliminated its reliance on external backers. Equipment and weapons for the Unified Force are procured from Russia, Türkiye, Iran and China, with Russia's Africa Corps remaining the bloc's preferred security partner even as the terms of that engagement vary from country to country. Analysts note this diversification is deliberate: by spreading dependence across several outside powers instead of one, the AES states avoid the single-point vulnerability that made the France-backed G5 Sahel collapse when Western support was withdrawn.

Russia's expanding footprint
Moscow remains the AES's most visible external patron. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, hosting the second round of Russia-AES ministerial consultations in Niamey, announced that both sides had agreed to extend their "3+1" cooperation framework beyond foreign policy into economic and financial spheres, including cooperation between central banks, with the next round of talks scheduled to take place in Russia in 2027. Russian engagement now extends beyond arms and mercenary deployments: officials from Russia and Burkina Faso have discussed launching a Russian telecommunications satellite to serve the AES bloc, covering governance, security and territorial monitoring applications, while Niger's junta leader General Abdourahamane Tiani has been the most consistent voice pushing for a common AES currency to eventually replace the CFA franc.

Türkiye, the Gulf and China fill the gaps
Türkiye has deepened a relationship with the Sahel states that dates back to the opening of its embassies in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso between 2010 and 2012. What began as a trade- and aid-focused approach has shifted toward arms provision and infrastructure development; Türkiye's Aksa Enerji, for instance, is building a 119-megawatt thermal power plant in Burkina Faso the largest in the country's history financed through a deal closed by the Africa Finance Corporation and expected to come online in 2027. Gulf States have similarly expanded their footprint through infrastructure projects and natural resource deals, while China has intensified economic engagement alongside its longstanding mining interests.

Even Western engagement has not disappeared entirely: the United States maintains limited counterterrorism-focused security cooperation with AES states, which analysts say prevents the bloc from becoming fully isolated and leaves a door open for eventual normalization.

The central unresolved question, according to regional security analysts, is whether the AES states can sustain the Unified Force and their broader confederal ambitions a joint parliament, a shared television channel launched in December 2025, and the proposed common currency primarily from their own resources, or whether the reliance on Russian, Turkish, Gulf and Chinese financing will simply reproduce, in a multipolar form, the same external dependency that undid the G5 Sahel.

What has become of ECOWAS
The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger became formally effective on January 29, 2025, one year after the three juntas notified the ECOWAS Commission of their intent to leave, as provided under Article 91 of the revised ECOWAS Treaty. ECOWAS Commission President Omar Alieu Touray confirmed the exit at a press conference in Abuja, while stressing that the bloc's institutions would leave the door open for dialogue.

Rather than a clean break, ECOWAS opted for managed disengagement. The bloc directed its remaining members to continue recognizing the national passports and identity cards of citizens from the three countries, to keep treating goods and services from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme (ETLS) and investment policy, and to preserve visa-free movement, residence and establishment rights for their citizens all "until further notice." A six-month grace period, brokered in December 2024 with Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye as mediator, was intended to give the three juntas room to reconsider; they did not.

The economic costs of separation
Despite these accommodations, analysts warn the split carries real and growing economic costs for both sides. Sahelian countries depend more heavily on regional trade than their coastal neighbors precisely because they are less urbanized and industrialized, producing agricultural commodities that are typically sold into Gulf of Guinea markets such as Abidjan. Close to two-thirds of livestock movements recorded in West Africa cross an international border, most of them flowing from the Sahel southward a trade highly dependent on the free movement ECOWAS was built to guarantee nearly 50 years ago.

Because ECOWAS's continued accommodations are voluntary rather than treaty-bound, they remain vulnerable to a shift in political mood. Any future deterioration in relations between AES states and their coastal neighbors could bring tighter border controls, and landlocked Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger would bear the heaviest cost, given their reliance on coastal ports and transit routes for international trade. On the ECOWAS side, the departure represents the most serious rupture in the bloc's history, stripping it of three member states, roughly 72 million people, and a landmass that includes key overland trade corridors even as the remaining 12 members insist the organization’s founding project of regional integration endures.

For ordinary citizens, the loss of a shared institutional identity is also being felt in less tangible ways: AES nationals will eventually need to develop their own travel documents rather than relying indefinitely on ECOWAS's goodwill, and the long-term durability of free movement now rests on diplomatic courtesy rather than binding regional law.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.
International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP
mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880

References
Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa), "Will the AES Unified Force succeed where the G5 Sahel failed?" March 4, 2026. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/will-the-aes-unified-force-succeed-where-the-g5-sahel-failed

Egmont Institute, "Stepping up Engagement in the Sahel: Russia, China, Türkiye and the Gulf States," April 2025. https://egmontinstitute.be/stepping-up-engagement-in-the-sahel-russia-china-turkey-and-the-gulf-states/

Egmont Policy Brief 375, Nina Wilén, "Stepping Up Engagement in the Sahel: Russia, China, Türkiye and the Gulf States." https://egmontinstitute.be/app/uploads/2025/04/Nina-Wilen_Policy_Brief_375_vFinal.pdf

European Union Institute for Security Studies, "The multi-aligned Sahel: Reframing the EU's role in a crowded region," December 9, 2025. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/briefs/multi-aligned-sahel-reframing-eus-role-crowded-region

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