On Friday 23 February, at the conference organised in Brussels on the Sahel G5, the European Union may announce a further contribution of €50 million for the joint Sahel G5 force (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), according to Nicolas Suran, French Ambassador to the Council's PSC Committee.
The funding would come from the African Peace Facility and assistance would only cover non-lethal material, in line with the European treaty.
“One of the aims of the conference is to support the joint force. At present, €250 million has been made available. The idea underpinning this conference is to go beyond the €300 million bar. It is expected that the EU and other member states will provide additional contributions”, a national source confirmed.
The joint force has estimated its needs at €423 million. The EU has already provided €50 million to the 5,000-strong force created in December 2014, and member states have provided €40 million bilaterally.
“The aim is also to highlight progress made with the force’s partners”, the national source went on to add, explaining that the force’s chief of staff, Didier Dacko, would take stock of operational progress and operations conducted in January.
Although a first operation was carried out in October 2017 and a second in January 2018, according to a European military source, the force should be fully operational this year.
“One of the objectives of the conference is to successfully mobilise international partners still further for security and development”, a European source added. Thus, the participants could take stock of the “Alliance for the Sahel” initiative which aims to strike a balance for the international approach between security and development.
The alliance partners could present a portfolio of 400 projects for the sum of €6 billion for 2018-2020, according to a member state source. The conference should thus provide an opportunity for announcing the first project amounting to €10 million, which will begin in the centre of Mali and be targeted on education and professional integration. “The logic behind the projects is geographical targeting focused on the most vulnerable areas of the Sahel, that is, where there is a risk of terrorist control, and to be able to combine security and development actions”, the same source said. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)