(Bamako) The new president of Senegal Bassirou Diomaye Faye considered possible Thursday in Bamako a reconciliation between the Community of West African States and the three Sahel countries which broke with ECOWAS under the leadership of the juntas which lead them.
Mr. Faye, invested in April, visited neighboring Mali on Thursday before landing in Burkina Faso, making his first visit to two of the three states which, with Niger, announced their exit from ECOWAS in January, accusing it of being subservient to the former French colonial power and of not having supported them enough against jihadism.
The three countries formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and founded a joint anti-jihadist force.
Mr. Faye said he spoke at length about ECOWAS with the head of the Malian junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta. The Malian position, “although rigid, is not totally inflexible,” he told the press alongside Colonel Goïta.
ECOWAS is “very mistreated”, but “we must not resign ourselves and say that we can no longer do anything. There are difficulties, we need to talk to everyone and understand them and, based on the level of understanding and the differences in position, see what it is possible to build from the existing base,” a- he said.
“I do not despair of seeing ECOWAS start again on new bases which will avoid the situation we are going through today,” he said without specifying the form of a possible reconciliation.
Mr. Faye’s visit was closely scrutinized. Mr. Faye was elected by promising a break with the old system.
He said he wanted to bring these three countries back into ECOWAS.
He preaches pan-Africanism and sovereignism which are also watchwords of the military regimes which have taken power during successive putsches in Mali, Burkina and Niger since 2020.
Mr. Faye, however, assured that he did not come to Bamako as an “ECOWAS mediator”, but for “making contact” which took him to several other West African countries beforehand. “I am not mandated by any ECOWAS body,” he insisted.
Senegal shares hundreds of kilometers of borders with Mali and maintains important commercial and human relations with it. The security situation in Mali and the Sahel and the risk of spread to Senegal, renowned for its stability, have long been a major concern in Dakar.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye “arrived this afternoon in Ouagadougou”, in Burkina, where “he was welcomed by the President of Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré”, according to the military regime’s website.