Canada will maintain its embassies and aid programs in the coup-plagued Sahel region of West Africa, even as several other Western countries pull their diplomats out, the federal government says.
France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have announced the closings of some or all of their embassies in the Sahel in recent months, as violent insurgencies have grown bloodier, peacekeepers have withdrawn and Russian soldiers have expanded their presence. But Canada is determined to stay, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told The Globe and Mail.
The Sahel countries will remain a favoured target for Canadian foreign aid, after Ottawa spent more than $1.8-billion on aid to the region over the past six years, Ms. Joly said, speaking at the end of her African visit last month, which included two days in Ivory Coast, a country bordering on the Sahel.
“After Haiti, per capita, this is the region we’re most investing in in the world,” she added.
Recent military coups in three Sahel countries – Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – prompted Global Affairs Canada to halt its direct assistance to the governments of those countries. Ottawa also withdrew its military trainers from Niger and its peacekeeping troops from Mali.
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But it plans to continue providing funds for health, education and other humanitarian programs for the most vulnerable people in the Sahel region, and it will retain its embassies in Mali and Burkina Faso, the two countries where Canada had diplomatic missions before the coups, Ms. Joly said.
“What I’ve been clear about, with my counterparts in Côte d’Ivoire, is that we have not closed our embassies, because we believe that we need to continue to have eyes and ears on the ground in Mali and Burkina Faso,” she said.
Charlotte MacLeod, a spokesperson for Global Affairs, confirmed that Canada has spent a total of more than $1.8-billion since 2018 on assistance to five Sahel countries: Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania.
Some of the aid was aimed at building democracy and human rights. But the aid failed to prevent military takeovers in three of the most violence-torn Sahel countries over the past four years, with pro-Russian regimes seizing power in each of them.
Asked about the coups, Ms. Joly said: “I’m not a person who gets discouraged. I’m an optimistic person. I think we need to continue to help the people there.”
Several other Western governments took a different approach. “As a result of military coups that have severely limited the scope for action in the Sahel region, the embassies in Burkina Faso and Mali will be closed,” the foreign ministry of Denmark said in a statement last week, the latest in a series of announcements of Western embassy closings.
After the coups, the three Sahel regimes invited Russian troops into their countries, including a major contingent of more than 1,000 troops in Mali. Since then, violence has soared. Clashes between military forces and insurgents have led to thousands of deaths over the past year, including hundreds killed in village massacres.
Late last month, in the worst of these massacres, Islamist insurgents killed hundreds of civilians in the town of Barsalogho in Burkina Faso. A group representing relatives of the victims estimated that at least 400 were killed.
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, an analysis unit in the U.S. Defence Department, reported that 11,200 people have been killed as a result of violent extremism in the Sahel this year – a threefold increase since 2021.
A further 4,740 civilians have been killed by Russian troops and the national armies of the three Sahel countries over the past three years, it said.
Yet the attacks failed to secure the region. About 60 per cent of Burkina Faso’s territory and about half of Mali’s territory has now fallen outside of government control, the centre reported.
Canada’s interests in the region go beyond just aid and development. Canadian mining companies have invested heavily in Mali and Burkina Faso, with companies such as Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. gaining billions of dollars in revenue from mining projects in the region.
Economic investment and development – even in countries where military conflict is raging – will be among the pillars of Canada’s new Africa strategy, which the federal government plans to announce by the end of this year, Ms. Joly said.
“We have a vision of Africa which is very much anchored in development, and we need to continue that, because development is fundamental – even more in times of conflict. And so we have to continue in the Sahel and in Sudan and around Sudan.”