EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
West Africa is experiencing a convergence of structural crises, including the institutionalization of military governance, the territorial consolidation of jihadist networks, and the fracturing of regional security frameworks, that collectively constitute the most serious threat to stability the subregion has faced since independence. This brief analyzes the key dynamics, assesses the deteriorating capacity of multilateral institutions, and advances targeted policy recommendations for regional actors, international partners, and civil society organizations committed to rebuilding a sustainable security order in West Africa.
The formal withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from ECOWAS on January 29, 2025 marks a watershed moment in West African regional governance. These three states, now bound together under the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), represent not merely a diplomatic rupture but a fundamental challenge to the normative and institutional framework that has underpinned regional security cooperation for five decades. The ECOWAS Standby Force remains operationally limited, with only 1,650 personnel projected for deployment in 2026, a figure widely considered insufficient to reverse near-term insecurity across a region the size of Western Europe.
Terrorism now poses an existential threat to the whole of West Africa, with 450 attacks and over 1,900 deaths recorded across the region in the first eleven months of 2025 alone.
Omar Alieu Touray, President of the ECOWAS Commission, November 2025The jihadist threat landscape has evolved significantly. JNIM has demonstrated sophisticated capacity for institutional adaptation, transitioning in key territories from insurgency toward territorial administration, providing rudimentary governance, taxing trade routes, and cultivating local legitimacy in the vacuum left by retreating state authority. In Mali, JNIM has imposed economic blockades on supply routes into Bamako, weaponizing economic dependency to erode state legitimacy. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and ISWAP add further complexity, with inter-factional clashes in which over 200 fighters were killed near Lake Chad in late 2025.
The withdrawal of French and Western military forces from the Sahel has created a strategic vacuum rapidly filled by Russia's Africa Corps (formerly Wagner Group), which has embedded itself within the military structures of AES states. Competitive external engagement, with Russia, the United States, China, Turkey, and Gulf states all maintaining or expanding footprints, risks transforming the Sahel into a theater of proxy competition, where local security needs are subordinated to external strategic calculations.
Terrorists thrive where the social contract is broken. Sustainable security demands not just military operations, but inclusive governance, climate adaptation, and economic opportunity.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Security Council, November 2025No serious analysis of West African insecurity can limit itself to military dynamics. Governance deficits, climate-induced resource scarcity, and chronic underfunding of humanitarian programs create the fertile ground on which extremist recruitment depends. Over 14,800 schools had closed in the region by mid-2025, leaving 3 million children without access to learning. The Sahel humanitarian appeal for 2025 totaling $409.7 million was funded at only 32 percent, forcing cuts in health, education, and protection programming across the region.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
West Africa stands at a pivotal inflection point. The choices made by regional bodies, national governments, international partners, and civil society in the next twelve to twenty-four months will determine whether the subregion finds a path toward a more resilient security order, or slides deeper into a cycle of fragmentation, extremism, and humanitarian catastrophe. JIDELFA International calls on all stakeholders to approach this moment with the urgency, resources, and principled commitment it demands. The people of West Africa deserve nothing less.