The Alliance of Sahel States and the Future of African Integration
Executive Summary
The formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and its formal withdrawal from ECOWAS mark a pivotal moment in the evolution of African regionalism, testing the institutional assumptions underpinning AU-led integration. AES’s emergence reveals not a wholesale rejection of regional cooperation, but a recalibration of its terms; one that privileges sovereignty, autonomy, and selective engagement over alignment with existing REC frameworks.
While AES policies may disrupt AfCFTA implementation through parallel customs structures and contested legal obligations, the bloc’s continued participation in continental frameworks underscores a more complex reality: institutional divergence is occurring within, not outside, Africa’s integration project. The AES case illustrates that the effectiveness of RECs depends less on structural formality and more on political coherence and shared purpose.
For AU and AfCFTA stakeholders, this moment demands neither alarm nor dismissal, but rather a recognition that resilience in integration will depend on legal adaptability, modular cooperation, and frameworks capable of absorbing, rather than resisting, structural shifts in regional alignment.
The Sahel Alliance Formalises its Exit from ECOWAS
The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) became operationally real on 29 January 2025, when the governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger formalised their collective withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The three countries issued a joint declaration asserting that their exit was immediate and irrevocable. However, in practice, a six-month transitional framework was observed, expiring at the end of July 2025. This interval was introduced to facilitate procedural disengagement, including the resolution of financial obligations, staff redeployment, and border coordination measures. To date, no formal ECOWAS–AES negotiations have taken place, and the three governments have not expressed any intention to return to the bloc.
The rationale for AES’s formation is rooted in a shared rejection of ECOWAS’s response to the military takeovers that led to the installation of transitional governments in Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023). All three governments were suspended by ECOWAS and the African Union (AU) under existing norms on unconstitutional changes of government. ECOWAS imposed a mix of economic sanctions, financial restrictions, and diplomatic isolation. The decision to exit ECOWAS was framed by the AES governments as a collective defence of national sovereignty and territorial control, rejecting what they described as foreign-backed external interference. These grievances were coupled with a stated objective to realign regional priorities away from externally imposed governance conditions and towards context-specific security and economic objectives.
The creation of AES is not only a political manoeuvre; it reflects a structural rupture in West Africa’s integration architecture. Existing AU and REC protocols offer no formal provisions for a bloc-level withdrawal, let alone the establishment of an alternative confederal arrangement by suspended member states. The Abuja Treaty (1991), which underpins the African Economic Community, and the Constitutive Act of the AU (2000) assume a unidirectional trajectory towards integration, coordinated through Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The 2008 Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Peace and Security between the AU and RECs further institutionalises this expectation, assigning RECs the primary responsibility for regional stabilisation under AU oversight. None of these instruments anticipates a scenario in which suspended member states reject both AU and REC coordination mechanisms to create a new bloc without any linkage to continental integration frameworks.
The AES departure, therefore, cannot be understood merely as a regional disagreement with ECOWAS. It represents a decisive break from the integrationist assumptions embedded in AU doctrine. While the AU promotes subsidiarity as a principle for managing multi-level governance between continental and regional institutions, it presupposes normative alignment and a political commitment to shared objectives. AES, by contrast, is constructing a parallel political identity, institutional structure, and vision that do not conform to existing AU-recognised frameworks. This is evidenced not only by the creation of the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development (BCID-AES) and the introduction of a common customs system, but also by diplomatic realignments with external actors that bypass both ECOWAS and the AU. The AES formation reflects an emerging bloc logic based on regime solidarity and realpolitik, rather than institutional continuity or legal interoperability. This challenges the very premise that RECs function as building blocks for the AU, instead revealing the fragility of that assumption under contested political conditions.
Lack of Institutional Defences
The AU’s integration model is constructed on the assumption that Regional Economic Communities (RECs) operate as foundational components of a broader continental structure. This model is codified in the Abuja Treaty and reaffirmed in the Constitutive Act of the AU. RECs are expected to coordinate regional economic and political initiatives, progressively harmonising their frameworks to support the establishment of the African Economic Community. The 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the AU and RECs further institutionalises this relationship, placing RECs at the core of regional peace and security interventions through the principle of subsidiarity. The model presumes an upward flow of integration, wherein RECs act as both delivery platforms and normative anchors for AU policies.
The formation of the AES challenges these assumptions at a structural level. By creating a parallel institutional framework outside of any AU-sanctioned arrangement, the AES governments are not merely circumventing ECOWAS but asserting a new logic of regionalism that is autonomous from the continental integration trajectory. The establishment of institutions such as the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development and the introduction of a collective customs framework are not peripheral decisions. They amount to a reconfiguration of trade, investment, and financial governance at the sub-regional level. This configuration does not align with the AU-recognised REC system and lacks any institutional bridge to continental structures. In practice, this creates a dual-track integration dynamic where AES participates in some continental frameworks, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), while simultaneously undermining their operational integrity through independent economic instruments.
The absence of a coherent response mechanism within the AU architecture makes this disruption more consequential. AU enforcement tools are calibrated for individual member state breaches, not for collective bloc-level divergence. While the AU Peace and Security Council has suspended AES states in line with its normative framework on unconstitutional changes of government, these measures apply to governments, not to the structural institutional choices they pursue collectively. There is no legal or procedural mechanism to compel or negotiate the reintegration of a breakaway sub-regional coalition. The AU–REC relationship is based on normative coordination and political consensus, rather than enforceable obligations. This institutional gap means that when consensus breaks down, as it has in the case of AES, there is no continental framework to manage or mediate the structural consequences.
Historical precedents in other RECs reveal the same vulnerability. In the East African Community, internal disputes, such as those involving Burundi in 2015, were addressed through political dialogue and suspension mechanisms; however, these mechanisms remained ad hoc and state-specific. The case of the Tripartite Free Trade Area involving COMESA, EAC, and SADC illustrates the complications of overlapping memberships and inconsistent legal obligations. While attempts were made to harmonise trade and customs systems, political divergences and administrative capacity constraints stalled implementation. These examples highlight that the REC system lacks the institutional elasticity to accommodate shifts in regional political alliances that fall outside of AU-sanctioned processes.
The AES configuration also introduces a challenge to the normative coherence of AU–REC relations. The REC model is premised on a shared commitment to democratic governance, the rule of law, and economic convergence. AES does not conform to these principles in either composition or orientation. Its institutional choices are framed around sovereignty, non-interference, and autonomy. This places AES in direct contradiction with the value system embedded in the AU’s integration project. Without a mechanism to address this normative divergence, the AU is left with an institutional void: it neither recognises AES nor has the instruments to address its implications for regional coherence. The AES governments, by asserting regional autonomy and consolidating security and economic initiatives outside of AU frameworks, have exposed the extent to which the AU–REC model is reliant on political alignment rather than structural resilience.
Continental Integration Commitments
The AfCFTA’s architecture relies on RECs as the institutional channels through which its trade protocols are applied. Article 19(2) of the AfCFTA Agreement explicitly states that existing REC arrangements may co-exist with the AfCFTA as long as they are aligned and non-contradictory. This coexistence is operationalised through progressive tariff harmonisation, coordinated rules of origin, and standardised customs procedures. AES’s formation disrupts this principle by creating an autonomous trade space with customs policies and tariff decisions that contradict both ECOWAS obligations and AfCFTA implementation logic.
AES has introduced a 0.5 percent customs levy on goods entering from ECOWAS countries. This constitutes a material trade barrier between AfCFTA signatories and contravenes the Protocols on Trade in Goods and Non-Tariff Barriers. It also challenges the free movement of goods framework that underpins both ECOWAS and the AfCFTA. The bloc is designing a confederal customs administration that is not linked to the ECOWAS Common External Tariff and operates independently of AfCFTA’s tariff liberalisation schedules. These institutional developments are occurring without coordination with either the ECOWAS Commission or the AfCFTA Secretariat, rendering AES a standalone economic entity within the same legal framework as AfCFTA, yet with contradictory operational norms.
Despite this divergence, the AES countries remain formal parties to the AfCFTA Agreement. Their continued membership reflects a use of legal status without corresponding institutional conformity. This disjuncture is compounded by the absence of corrective mechanisms within AfCFTA to address bloc-level divergence. The AfCFTA dispute settlement framework is state-centric and assumes compliance failures will emerge bilaterally, not through a coordinated parallel bloc acting outside formal trade governance. The legal ambiguity surrounding AES’s status creates uncertainty around the enforceability of commitments, complicates rule-of-origin verification, and undermines confidence in common trade protocols. For instance, it is unclear whether goods exported from AES under their new customs identity will be eligible for AfCFTA preferential treatment or whether they violate rules designed to prevent trade deflection.
In practical terms, this fragmentation disrupts trade corridors that were structured around ECOWAS infrastructure planning. AES’s disengagement has cast doubt over financing and oversight for shared corridors funded through the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development. Legal disputes are already emerging over project liabilities, repayment schedules, and access guarantees. The transport corridors from Niger and Burkina Faso to ports in Togo and Benin now require bilateral renegotiation. The proposed Moroccan-supported Dakhla–N’Djamena logistics corridor bypasses traditional West African trade routes altogether, further distorting the regional trade geography upon which AfCFTA integration efforts were built. These shifts indicate a reorganisation of economic flows that risks creating new exclusions and fragmenting regional trade space.
The operational readiness of AES to manage an autonomous customs system remains uncertain. The announced Confederal Bank for Investment and Development lacks legal standing in global financial systems, has no credit rating, and has no formalised relationship with African multilateral finance institutions. It is unclear whether the bloc has the institutional or digital capacity to operationalise a rules-of-origin system or monitor trade facilitation performance across borders. This creates the risk that informal networks will dominate, reducing transparency, complicating tariff management, and undermining the AfCFTA’s drive for harmonised digital customs clearance and data sharing.
Across the continent, rules-of-origin manuals have not been uniformly adopted, customs digitisation is uneven, and border compliance costs remain high. The AfCFTA’s guided trade initiative has been slow to scale, and many RECs still operate under non-aligned schedules of liberalisation. In this fragmented environment, the AES model (anchored in political solidarity and sovereignty-first economics) may serve as a template for other sub-regional coalitions dissatisfied with the pace or terms of continental integration. Without institutional tools to manage these divergences or enforce bloc-wide coherence, AfCFTA risks becoming a framework in name only, dependent on political consensus rather than enforceable norms.
Limitations of Fixed Linear Models
The formation of the AES introduces a challenge that cannot be addressed solely through legalistic or procedural frameworks. It raises the broader question of whether the current model of AU–led integration, built on a fixed REC architecture and rigid subsidiarity assumptions, remains capable of adapting to political realignments that are no longer anomalies but recurring features of regional politics. The emergence of AES does not necessarily constitute a rejection of integration as a principle. Instead, it reflects a contestation of the legitimacy, equity, and responsiveness of the existing institutional arrangements, especially the perceived overreach or inflexibility of ECOWAS in managing political transitions. The withdrawal from ECOWAS and the construction of new trade and security frameworks indicate that the underlying political will for coordination remains, but its expression has shifted into forms not recognised by current AU instruments.
This disjuncture reveals that the AU’s normative framework presumes that RECs are not only technical platforms for implementation, but also politically coherent communities. However, in practice, RECs are coalitions of states with diverging political systems, external alignments, and security priorities. The effectiveness of any REC depends less on its legal mandates and more on the political cohesion of its member states. The East African Community, for example, has faced repeated frictions between member governments, including disputes around electoral legitimacy and intervention protocols, but has managed to avoid fragmentation through a pragmatic tolerance for political heterogeneity. The SADC has weathered multiple episodes of contested leadership transitions without formal rupture, mainly due to a shared interest in collective stability and the absence of punitive enforcement mechanisms. COMESA has sustained overlapping memberships with both SADC and EAC, despite incompatible tariff and investment regimes, by focusing on functional trade facilitation rather than enforcing rigid convergence.
While other regional economic communities such as COMESA and EAC have experienced operational anomalies, including overlapping memberships and tariff inconsistencies, these cases have typically remained within coordinated AfCFTA-compatible frameworks. In contrast, AES’s strategic design as a structurally distinct economic and political bloc introduces a scale and degree of institutional detachment that exceeds previous cases, particularly in terms of customs enforcement, legal autonomy, and external alignment.
The AES case highlights what occurs when that political cohesion collapses and no adaptive mechanism exists to absorb or manage divergence. Rather than responding with institutional flexibility, the AU and ECOWAS relied on suspension and isolation, which failed to account for the growing domestic legitimacy these governments enjoyed within their respective contexts. The political capital behind AES is derived from popular demands for sovereignty and a recalibrated external posture, rather than a rejection of multilateralism. In this light, the formation of AES may be better understood as a structural stress test of the African integration model rather than its breakdown. It exposes the limits of legal centralism and reveals the absence of mechanisms for reconfiguring bloc membership or accommodating alternative regional arrangements without defaulting to punitive disengagement.
Future bloc configurations may need to adopt more adaptive approaches to integration that allow for asymmetrical participation, variable geometry, and modular cooperation. The assumption that all RECs must converge under a uniform continental framework may no longer be realistic in a context of contested political legitimacy and rising geopolitical differentiation. Instead, models that preserve core functional cooperation, such as trade corridors, monetary platforms, or security pacts, without demanding full normative alignment, may offer more sustainable pathways. AES, by establishing a political identity that claims regional legitimacy while discarding AU and ECOWAS oversight, illustrates both the fragility of current integration models and the opportunity to rethink how resilience is conceptualised in African institutional design. Whether the AU chooses to treat AES as an aberration or a stimulus for reform will define its capacity to navigate a more fragmented but interconnected political landscape.
Policy Implications
For the AU, the emergence of a parallel bloc exposes foundational gaps in its integration and governance instruments. Existing mechanisms within the AU legal framework offer no precedent or legal pathway for addressing bloc-level fragmentation. The normative structure, centred on state membership and guided by principles of subsidiarity through RECs, cannot accommodate cases where states collectively diverge from a recognised REC but remain within the AU framework. The AU has no authority to suspend or sanction a sub-regional coalition, and its current tools, political declarations, communiqués, and institutional dialogue, are not suited to managing structurally autonomous regional blocs operating outside established integration paths. The AES case illustrates that enforcement under the current AU structure is both procedurally limited and politically dependent on a consensus that no longer exists across all member states.
For AfCFTA stakeholders, this institutional vacuum translates into operational uncertainty. The AfCFTA framework assumes alignment between national commitments, REC facilitation, and continental oversight. AES’s divergence renders this architecture incoherent. Without tools to mediate, reintegrate, or legally address non-compliant trade configurations by state parties acting collectively, the AfCFTA Secretariat is left managing fragmented commitments within a legally unified framework. This undermines legal predictability and strains the reciprocity and market access assumptions that are central to continental trade. The absence of binding dispute settlement at the bloc level and the slow development of compliance monitoring systems have left the Secretariat reactive rather than proactive in managing divergence. The AES example reveals the need for both a legal recalibration and the political tools to navigate hybrid or partial integration models that may emerge in other regions.
In terms of regional governance more broadly, the AES case reopens the question of how integration should be conceptualised. The fixed REC model, with assumed linear convergence towards the African Economic Community, now appears ill-suited to the current geopolitical and economic realities. The rise of overlapping initiatives, parallel trade corridors, and informal security arrangements had already eroded the centrality of formal RECs. AES consolidates this trend by creating a bloc that is neither rogue nor fully integrated, but instead aligned with external partners and driven by a logic of autonomy. This orientation challenges the assumption that integration requires deep normative alignment and centralised coordination. Instead, it suggests that modular regionalism (structured around shared infrastructure, flexible legal commitments, and ad hoc political coalitions) may become a more viable form of cooperation in environments of contested legitimacy and asymmetrical state capacity.
The broader implication is that continental integration is no longer a linear or uniform process. Bloc pluralism is emerging as a durable feature of the African political economy landscape. The AU must recognise that integration now involves managing a complex map of overlapping, nested, and sometimes competing structures rather than enforcing a singular institutional path. If not addressed through adaptive frameworks and clearer principles for interoperability, these divergences risk hollowing out the legitimacy of the AU’s legal instruments and institutional relevance. AES presents not only a political challenge but a prompt to reimagine the design and coordination of integration on the continent in a way that is more resilient to political shifts, institutional fatigue, and regional realignments.
The AES case invites reconsideration not only of bloc governance but of the future role of RECs themselves. Rather than reinforcing rigid REC boundaries, continental institutions may need to explore pathways for gradually phasing out legacy RECs in favour of a more interoperable, principle-based system of regional cooperation. This would entail shifting from geographically bound structures toward legally adaptive frameworks that preserve economic and political coordination without locking states into static institutional alignments. Such a shift would require harmonised norms, enforceable interoperability protocols, and a flexible legal architecture capable of managing multi-speed and variable-geometry integration.