Why the Sahel Crisis Matters Geography

Why the Sahel Crisis Matters

Alexander Wasserstein

A brief background of the Sahel

The Sahel. It is often referred to as the coast of the Sahara; even the word ‘Sahel’ derives from the Arabic word for coast, or shore. Politically, the term ‘Sahel’ usually includes what are known as the G5 Sahel countries: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Geographically, the word can refer to parts of many more countries on the southern edge of the Sahara: Senegal, southern Algeria, northern Nigeria, the very north of Cameroon, central Sudan, and Eritrea.

The geographical Sahel is a very flat, semi-arid region, mostly sitting between 200 and 500 metres above sea level.

Topographical map of the Sahel (Source: researchgate.net)

Usually, more than 8 months of the year are dry with a three to four month rainy season in June, July and August. Droughts are a constant problem; some last years and during these times famine spreads rapidly as even the most drought resistant of crops, like the millet and sorghum most commonly found in the Sahel, struggle. Even during the times when droughts are not depriving the region of rain, a food crisis still rages on - and it’s getting worse.

Vegetation in the Sahel region is typically semi-arid, consisting of scattered trees, bushes and grasses (https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36538648262, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/35898272123, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36569506061)

Politically, the situation is not any less fragile as terrorist groups plague the region with constant violence and governments struggle to control their own countries. France and the United States have troops in the region while China looks to instead fight a diplomatic war with the so-called Belt and Road initiative. There is a refugee crisis, with thousands of people fleeing their homes every day and, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2.7 million people have fled violence in the region (1).

The region is home to large numbers of different peoples and cultures as well - and while the majority of the people of the Sahel are Muslim, there are the Tuareg in the north, the Soninke in the west, the Malinke who are also mostly concentrated in western Mali and Senegal, the Songhai in the south, and the Fulani and Hausa in Niger and Nigeria (2). The sheer number of ethnic groups in the environment of the Sahel means that conflict between them is inevitable.

These issues perfectly fit the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a crisis - ‘a time of intense difficulty or danger’. The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel is one of the world’s biggest and most severe.

Humanitarian Crisis Political Crisis Environmental Crisis

2.7m

People have fled violence in the region. 1.8m people have been displaced. (1) 18,000

The number of peacekeeping personnel from MINUSMA. 260 have been killed. (6) 80%

Of the region’s land is degraded. (12)

Part Two:

Political Issues

One of the biggest issues in the Sahel is the terrorist groups throughout the region, which is covered in violence; not only with groups such as Boko Haram and Al Qaeda, but with nomads, such as the Tuareg, fighting for the creation of their own state. The issue arose due to European colonialism. When Mali became independent from the French, it was demographically heavily divided, roughly by the Niger river, between the Tuareg nomads in the north and the wealthier south. The central Government provided (and still does) far more funding to the southern regions than the northern ones and oppressed the Tuareg people, and since then there have been multiple outbreaks of violence. While the situation has improved, there is still a heavy sense of division in the country which can give rise to violence.

The United Nations (UN) has described the situation in the Sahel as ‘extremely volatile’ (3), and the regular terrorist attacks support this statement. Although in 2013 the UN approved the creation of a 12,600 member peacekeeping force, known as MINUSMA, based in Mali, the terrorist attacks around the region did not cease. An example was the Kano attack in 2014, by Boko Haram, in which an attack on a mosque in the Nigerian city of Kano resulted in the deaths of 120 people (4). There have also been attacks on soldiers; an ambush on a military encampment near Lake Chad killed 91 people (5). In 2014, the situation had become so bad that 4,500 French troops arrived in the region, vital for the uranium mines in countries such as Niger. The G5 Sahel countries also put together a combined force of around 5,000 military personnel, police officers and border patrol officers. More recently, in 2020, after President Macron of France convened a summit to essentially ask for help, other European countries have begun to commit troops, including Denmark, Czechia, Estonia, Sweden, and the UK, who sent more than 400 military personnel. Additionally, the French sent in 600 more troops (6). By November 2021, the peacekeeping mission MINUSMA had over 18,000 personnel, according to the UN, and 260 fatalities. This gives it one of the highest mortality rates of any UN peacekeeping mission (7). All the terrorism and violence contributes to another big political issue not only for the Sahel but for Europe - migration. 2.7 million people have fled the violence in the Sahel. 1.8 million people have been internally displaced; in Burkina Faso it’s 1 in 20 people - 5% of their population. 845,000 people have fled across borders, 650,000 of whom in the last year alone 54

(8). This means that large city-sized populations are crossing international borders every year. Most migration in the region is legal - most states in the Sahel region and in fact West Africa follow ‘free movement procedure’. However, for the migrants trying to reach the shores of Southern Europe, this migration is illegal after departure from Niger into Libya towards Africa’s north coast. This route is extremely dangerous and few can reach the north coast, let alone make it successfully to southern Europe. The incoming refugees matter not only for the domestic politics and foreign policies of countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, but also make a statement as to the dire situation in the Sahel; so dire that people are willing to risk their lives for just a chance at the life that hundreds of millions in Europe take for granted. There are things being done, however, to help refugees in the Sahel. The UNHCR has commissioned multiple housing projects in countries such as Niger to aid internally displaced people as well as providing veterinary care for some of the herders’ animals. There is also increased help being provided in terms of food and medical care (more details in part 3). Another factor is China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. China has planned a railway line from Dakar to Bamako. During his term as Senegal’s foreign minister, Sidiki Kaba said that “the Belt and Road Initiative…will bring opportunities for development of all countries in the world” (9). However, China has invested noticeably less in the western part of Africa than the eastern part. I interviewed Katherine Rowe, a Director at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, about this and her response was that ‘[China] invests in countries where it can get something out’ (10). She explained that while the Sahel countries do have some natural resources, they proportionally do not have a large amount and therefore China’s big projects have been in places like Djibouti, which has direct access to the ocean, unlike many Sahel countries. Mrs Rowe also mentioned that being landlocked is a big disadvantage for many of the Sahel countries. Not only does it cut off a nation from fishing and other maritime resources, but it also prevents direct access to the world’s shipping lanes. This results in less profit from exports and makes it more difficult to develop. For now, however, what is really necessary for millions of people across the Sahel is peace. Peace in the Sahel would mean that rebuilding efforts can take off without the fear of terrorists ruining houses and killing or taking livestock. The Sahel needs peace.

Part Three

The Environmental Crisis

The Sahel has a distinctly irregular climate; the region is and has always been vulnerable to major droughts, the most recent one being in 2010. During this time, according to the Guardian, almost half the population of Niger at the time - over 7 million people - faced food insecurity (11). Thousands of animals also starved to death as people ate the fodder themselves. 2010 was not the first time; it is likely that these droughts will get more common as climate change gets worse and this could result in yet more difficulty for the region. For example, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley wrote that if things keep on going as they are, temperatures in the Sahel will be 3-5o Celsius warmer by 2050 (12). This also, therefore, means that extreme weather events will become more common. Moreover, it makes land degradation worse - the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that over 80% of the region’s land is degraded. However, a significant amount of this does come from deforestation (13).

Even when droughts are less of an issue, there is a food crisis in the region. In 2018, more than 1.3 million children across the G5 Sahel countries and Senegal required treatment for severe acute malnutrition, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (14). Some children are left permanently disabled due to this disease. This is compounded by the fact that severe acute malnutrition makes children more vulnerable to other prevalent diseases in the area, especially water borne diseases such as malaria.

There is a difficulty in growing crops due to a constant race against the weather (Source: www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655300226)

The most common crops grown in the Sahel depend on the part of the region. In the drier, northern part, millet and sorghum are more common as they are more drought resistant crops. In the slightly wetter, more southern part of the Sahel, maize is more common. However, the difficulty here is not the crops themselves but the difficulty in growing them. Contextnet quoted that farming in the Sahel is constantly a ‘race against the weather’ with crops such as Sorghum needing to be harvested as soon as possible to minimise bird damage (15). Additionally, seeds, often damaged by disease, must be kept over to be planted the next year due to little disposable income. Farms, often smaller than 1 hectare, sometimes barely produce enough to feed the owners and their families. Therefore, there is often very little product to sell, let alone make significant amounts of money from (16).

Part Four

A Conclusion and Why it Matters

So why does the Sahel crisis matter? It matters because millions of people in the region are suffering from preventable diseases such as malnutrition every year. It matters because terrorists are destabilising countries and killing innocent people in the region every day; not only the Sahel countries but the countries around it. Côte d’Ivoire, for example, has a strong tourism industry, but that will break down if terrorist groups appear there. It also matters because these issues could cause a refugee crisis with many fleeing towards the north. The crisis matters because it shows to what extent factors such as conflict and bad governance can limit a country’s development. Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion writes that there are four main poverty traps that prevent development: conflict, natural resources, being landlocked, and bad governance (17). All four of these factors apply in the Sahel, and they all link to each other - for example, bad governance leading to conflict. This therefore means that it will be extremely difficult for the Sahel to develop. However, there is a bigger issue. The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel matters as it acts as a case study for the human effects of climate change which could affect the entire planet; hotter temperatures and more frequent droughts could become an issue in many countries across the world. These effects, as have been seen in the Sahel, could make it so much worse, especially for developing countries. The Sahel crisis matters because it proves just how much global warming matters.

Sources

(1,8): Sahel Crisis: Aid, Statistics and News | USA for UNHCR (2): https://www.worldatlas.com/regions/sahel-of-africa.html

(3): Situation in West Africa, Sahel 'Extremely Volatile' as Terrorists Exploit Ethnic Animosities (4): Sahel - Wikipedia (5,6): The Power Of Geography by Tim Marshall (2021) (7): MINUSMA | United Nations Peacekeeping (9): China's "Belt and Road Initiative" Arrives in West Africa (10): Rowe, K (2022) Interview with Director at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office regarding the Sahel. Interview undertaken by Alexander Wasserstein on 19/01/2022. (11): Millions face starvation in west Africa, warn aid agencies | Niger | The Guardian (12,13): The Sahel: One region, many crises | Africa Renewal (14): About Us | UNICEF USA (15,16): https://contextnet.com/farming-on-the-edge-smallholders-in-africas-sahel (17): The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier (2007)

Images

All images are licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0.

(0) Edited version of: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_sahel_2.svg (1) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655301546 (2) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36538648262 (3) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/35898272123 (4) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36569506061 (5) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/7074065999 (6) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655300226 (7) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8328854107 (8) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8329912494