One year after notifying ECOWAS of their intention to withdraw, the regional body has set Jan. 29, 2025 as the official date for the exit of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. While there is still room for reconciliation as indicated at the 66th ECOWAS summit held in Nigeria on December 15th, recent developments suggest they are not going back. Their formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Sept. 2023 showed their commitment to a new bloc rather than the regional organisation.
In 1975, when ECOWAS was formed by 15 West African countries, two of its mandates were to promote democratic government and developmental priorities like economic prosperity, free movement and good governance across all the member states. However, recent successful coups in the three Sahel nations have undermined the agenda of the regional organisation. This failure has culminated in the significant question of whether ECOWAS can still defend democracy in West Africa. What is most important in this discussion is the major cause of this exit and how it will influence ECOWAS’s diplomacy in the future.
Weak Leadership
First of all, the decision of the three Sahel nations can be linked to the result of compounded coups across the three countries over the last four decades. To understand the roots of these coups, the emergence of military governments in Africa is due to either weak leadership or underperformance of civilian governments. In the Sahel region, for instance, there is instability with government institutions and insecurity, which affects local economics. Global Conflict Tracker reported that “weak leadership in regional efforts” were creating a “vacuum in which violent extremism can expand” to military intervention in West Africa.
From 1960 to 2022, Burkina Faso had experienced 11 successful coups, the highest among its counterparts in the region, and each coup lasted for at least 3 years. The uprising in the country was influenced by a sense of lack of support from the regional bloc to combat the insecurity gripping their country. Now, the three Sahel countries have come together to form an alliance to wage war against many of its insecurity problems and developmental challenges. Beyond this, the alliance is focused on forming a strong leadership and supporting development initiatives.

Implications
Unfortunately, the decision of the three countries to leave ECOWAS will significantly impact their trading patterns for a long time. Think of their newly formed sub-regional bloc as a new start-up, underfunded and overburdened, but crazy about growth. With just three nations at the table, to what extent can they thrive and have economic independence considering their landlocked area? For Burkina Faso, the leader of the country’s military government, Ibrahim Traore, emphasized that, after parting with the West African franc (CFA) currency, they are “breaking all ties that keep [them] in slavery” with ECOWAS. The three countries are in a mostly agrarian area with less economic activity compared to their larger and more prosperous coastal neighbours. Much of what they do is dependent on import and export from those coastal neighbours. If they eventually exit ECOWAS, those trade opportunities could experience more friction due to tariffs, which would subsequently affect their trading patterns and increase cost of living in those countries.

Looking at the data, all three of the AES states trade the most with neighbouring countries, depending on them for between 40% and 70% of imports and exports. Take Burkina Faso for example. The country does most of its trading with Cote d’Ivoire, with an export and import share of 43.7% and 14.8% respectively in 2022. This means that a significant part of Burkina Faso’s economic activities relies on the demand for its products in Cote d’ivoire. For Mali, the export share of total products that were sold to the same country was 20.2% in 2019. Niger, in another instance, has strong trade patterns with Nigeria with 43.9% of import share, compared to other countries in West Africa.
However, this pattern will be affected after the three Sahel’s nations finally fall out in January. The free trade agreement, according to ECOWAS, ensures free movement of products within the West African countries without taxes or custom duties imposed on imported goods, which is only applicable to member countries. The assumption then remains that once they exit, there will be limitations to these movements and consequently reduce both regional and sub-regional businesses and profits.
Another implication of the exit is that the amount of trade creation, diversion, and trade effects generated through the removal of tariffs on imported goods will experience a shortfall. For instance, Niger, among its counterparts, generated $49.9 million from trade creation due to ECOWAS policies, providing new opportunities for trade within the country and Nigeria being its closest partner in the region. On the other hand, Burkina Faso generated $4.2 million trade through the removal of tariffs on import goods. All of these figures are expected to go down, contributing to more economic crises in the sub-region, starting next year. Niger also ranks second for total trade effects due to the removal of those tariffs.

The AES effect
The window for the three nations to reconsider their decision will close in July 2025, six months after the official exit, and ECOWAS will permanently remove their names from its list. What will be left for the regional bloc is how to avoid losing other members in the future. The Alliance of Sahel States may not be fully there yet, but its presence is capable of influencing other Sahel states like Chad and Mauritania to become members. For instance, AES is a sub-regional bloc that talks about a primary focus on strategic cooperation and economic growth within the Sahel region. Also, the military governments are supporting each other against ECOWAS sanctions, which is against the regional policy in 2001. The disagreement, as observed, will open more doors for other regional member states currently under military rule to pivot and join AES to be able to exercise their military power and sovereignty in their countries.
For ECOWAS, this is a challenge for its democratic principles. In January 2024, analysts examined the implications of this influence and tied it to ECOWAS’s mandate and purpose for integration. According to the report, the regional bloc “needs to have protocols and mechanisms in place to begin to respond to that situation of insecurity and instability before it leads to a point where governments are actually overthrown.”
As ECOWAS turns 50 in May 2025, it must answer the questions around governance and economic prosperity that have been posed by the formation of the AES, as well as the events preceding it. Doing so will ensure that the next 50 years is more impactful for the people of West Africa.
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