Europe’s Forthcoming Sahel Strategy: A Limited Role in a Multipolar Region

Europe’s previous security strategy towards the Sahel region, anchored in French-led operations and EU capacity-building missions, failed to deliver a lasting impact. Ambitions were unrealistic, given the region’s vast needs, and efforts misaligned with local elites who prioritised regime survival over reform. Europe had little leverage once coups unfolded, and the juntas chose to realign with alternative partners.

Successive coups in the central Sahel—Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—dismantled over a decade of European engagement. These countries expelled Europeans and instead invited Russian forces—first the Wagner Group, now the Africa Corps—while deepening ties with states such as Iran and North Korea.

Looking ahead, Europe’s strategy should be recalibrated around realistic objectives. In the near term, this means maintaining a limited presence to track security and political trends. Europe must also plan for a multipolar Sahel in which Russia plays a sustained role in the security sphere, and where Europe’s own role will be more limited, selective, and focused on areas of genuine interest alignment.

In particular, it recommends that Europe should:

• Maintain a limited on-the-ground presence (embassies and EUCAP Mali) to track security, political and humanitarian trends;
• Strengthen monitoring of jihadist spillover and illicit maritime/arms networks;
• Strengthen cooperation with neighbouring countries;
• Pursue selective, apolitical cooperation (climate adaptation, agriculture, water management, education, health);
• Reframe EU coordination under willing members (Spain, Germany, Italy);
• Invest in local media, researchers and documentation to counter propaganda and enable future accountability; expand strategic communications in local languages;
• Maintain sanctions on Wagner/Africa Corps affiliates;
• Use military force only in time-bound, exceptional cases (e.g., imminent state collapse or high-value counter-terror strikes).