Dear newsletter subscriber,
life in the Sahel zone, which stretches from Senegal to Eritrea, has never been easy. Climate conditions are difficult; there is little fertile land. Since gaining independence in the 1960s, countries in the region have experienced numerous security and humanitarian crises, in which terrorism, economic decline, criminality and the advancing climate crisis have fed into one another.
Few events from this part of the world make their way in detail to people on the outside. While many have heard of the unprecedented number of military coups that have taken place in the “coup belt” between Guinea and Sudan since 2020, subsequent developments, in-depth background analyses and the fates of individuals often get lost in international reporting among images of armed men in camouflage racing down dusty roads in pickup truck beds.
Yet conflicts in the Sahel region have a direct impact on migration and supply chains, for instance for critical commodities, worldwide. As Europe continues to lose credibility, Russia and China in particular are expanding their influence here.
For example, did you know that Bamako, the capital of Mali, and other cities in the country’s south have been under a de facto fuel blockade for a year now due to activities of the jihadist group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda offshoot? The approximately 1000 fuel trucks that had reached Bamako as of July 2026 were able to break through the blockade partly because they were escorted by Russia’s “Africa Corps” and, increasingly, by Turkish drones.
Russia is supporting military juntas elsewhere, too, and filling the gap that opened up when anticolonialist voices against France called for the last French soldiers to return home. At the end of August, a military faction in Niger staged a coup against the ruling junta. Russia claims to have helped end the uprising.
Clearly, however, Russia cannot help military governments from Niger to Burkina Faso keep their promises to provide security and stability. As the two expert authors of our deep dives explain, further unrest is inevitable unless the core problems of the Sahel are tackled by reliable governments that have the welfare of all segments of society in the region at heart.
Please feel free to share your opinions, criticisms and suggestions by emailing us at euz.editor@dandc.eu. |
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Kind regards,
Katharina Otieno
editor at D+C |
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© picture alliance / Hans Lucas / Samir Maouche
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“The Sahel states have to make peace with their own peripheries”
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People in the Sahel are being forced by constant conflict to abandon traditional strategies for coping with climate change, yet they are unable to develop new ones. At the same time, climate change is being misused as a convenient excuse for political failures. What the region actually needs is for governments to address issues of land, security and mobility strategies for their populations, explains political geographer Kamal Donko in an interview.
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© picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS / Boubacary Bocoum
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Why military solutions keep failing in the Sahel
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Political expert Olayinka Ajala writes that peace in the Sahel will not be achieved through increased military intervention, but by tackling the effects of climate change, government failure and the exclusion of marginalised groups such as the Tuareg. Otherwise, armed groups will continue to terrorise communities.
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Our latest Digital Monthly:
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| How are we going to survive the climate crisis? |
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fewer people have been reached by 20 German civil-society development organisations over the past three years because of the current cuts to German public funding for development cooperation and humanitarian aid, as reported by the umbrella organisation VENRO. The figure for all 150 VENRO member organisations is likely to be significantly higher. According to VENRO, the consequences are not limited to a few projects or funding volumes. Rather, the organisations are observing a structural weakening of the entire system of international cooperation, the true consequences of which will become apparent only in hindsight.
The budget of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), which recently accounted for around 40 % of German official development assistance (ODA), is expected to shrink again next year. The draft federal budget for 2027 provides for a cut from the current figure of around € 10 billion to around € 9.5 billion. In 2023, the BMZ still had more than € 12 billion at its disposal. The budget for humanitarian aid has been cut since 2022 from more than € 3 billion to around € 1 billion.
In mid-September, several German development organisations submitted a petition with around 100,000 signatures to members of the German parliament (Bundestag) to take a stand against the cuts to development cooperation and humanitarian aid. |
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The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for the introduction of a world map that more accurately reflects the actual proportions of the continents. The resolution, introduced by Togo and other member states of the African Union, is aimed in particular at depicting the size of the African continent more accurately. The widely used Mercator projection, developed in the 16th century for European navigators, distorts the proportions because of the way the curved surface of the Earth is transferred onto a flat map: regions near the poles consequently appear oversized, while regions close to the equator appear smaller than they actually are.
Now that Africa appears larger on the map, it might perhaps be easier for the US Department of State (or rather, the AI it uses) to correctly assign African territories to the right countries on presentation slides in future. At the AIDS 2026 Conference in Rio de Janeiro in July, it used a heavily distorted, AI-generated map of Africa, on which all the highlighted countries were incorrectly labelled and positioned. That optimism is tempered, however, by the fact that the United States was the only nation to vote against the non-binding resolution.
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| What has also caught our interest |
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What sort of hairstyle do you need to get a job?
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The way hair grows on a person’s head should not, in fact, have any bearing on how good you think they are at maths or whether you believe they are suitable for a job. In this article in The Guardian – part of the highly recommended “Cotton Capital” series – Nadine White shows that Black people’s hair is still viewed through the lens of colonial notions of “neatness” – whether in schools in Ghana, Jamaica and Trinidad, or in British classrooms and workplaces.
The article shifts between recent cases and those from the distant past: from pupils in the US being pulled out of classrooms because of their Afros or dreadlocks, to the forced shaving of enslaved people as a means of humiliation. This is not about hairstyles as a lifestyle choice, but about power, the pressure to conform and the question of who determines what counts, for example, as “professional”. The good news is that things are changing – with new, more tolerant rules in the Caribbean, initiatives such as the Halo Code in the UK, and the Crown Act, under which California became the first US state to ban discrimination on the basis of natural hairstyles in 2019. |
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Breaking with chemical fertilisers, a more holistic approach
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The recent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has led to a global shortage of fertiliser supplies, raising fears similar to those experienced during the global food crisis of 2008. African governments have sought to mitigate this crisis by providing farmers with alternative supplies from other sources, as well as state subsidies. However, such measures have proved ineffective and costly, and do not reliably help to combat hunger or improve food security.
Instead, agroecology – an approach that combines agricultural, economic and sustainability principles – has achieved better results. In countries such as Brazil and Senegal, it has already led to higher crop yields and rising incomes for farmers. According to this report by Al Jazeera, its use is on the rise: farmers’ organisations promoting these methods now support thousands of farmers in countries across North and West Africa. |
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| Disease systems, not health systems |
More money for health does not necessarily mean better health – and this is precisely where Ricardo Baptista Leite, a doctor, former member of the Portuguese parliament and head of HealthAI, begins with an uncomfortable diagnosis: many systems in the Global North are, in reality, not health systems but “disease systems” – mechanisms that only react once people are already ill. Expensive, inefficient and, in the long run, barely sustainable.
This Devex article outlines his prescription for the Global South: it should not try to catch up by simply repeating the same mistakes. On the contrary, countries without cumbersome legacy structures could place much greater emphasis on prevention, quality of life and technology – and in doing so, potentially build a better model.
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| In this section, we occasionally highlight small projects that are making a difference at the community level – because sometimes it's not major international decisions that make a tangible difference on the ground, but small, local actions. |
The organisation PALPER operates in North Kivu province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, it supports people who are particularly hard hit by poverty, violence and crises. Its approach is wide-ranging: PALPER is active in the fields of education, health, agriculture, water and sanitation, the protection of vulnerable groups, emergency aid, environmental protection, microfinance and research. The aim is to bring about lasting improvements in the living conditions of families in difficult circumstances and to strengthen their resilience to disasters. PALPER was founded by people from North Kivu more than 10 years ago and remains firmly rooted in the region. The organisation is currently seeking international partners to provide practical or financial support for its work.
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The European Committee of the Regions offers five-month, full-time Cicero traineeships in Brussels during the Spring Session, running from 16 February to 15 July. Trainees receive a grant of approximately € 1,538 per month, plus travel and mobility support. Applicants need a completed undergraduate degree or at least three years of higher education, as well as fluency in one EU language and a satisfactory knowledge of English or French.
Application deadline: 1 October
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The SSN Media Fellowship supports members of the Scholars Strategy Network who are new to media engagement in communicating research across platforms such as television, radio, print, op-eds and social media. Fellows will meet with an experienced mentor about five times during the 2026–2027 academic year. Applications require a CV as well as descriptions of research, motivations and interests.
Application deadline: 21 September
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Imprint
Publisher information: ENGAGEMENT GLOBAL gGmbH Service für Entwicklungsinitiativen
Publisher: Fazit Communication GmbH, Pariser Straße 1, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Telephone: +49 (0)69 7591-3110 | Email: euz.editor@dandc.eu
Webseite: www.fazit.de | Managing Directors: Jonas Grashey, Hannes Ludwig |
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