West Africa’s Slow-Onset Crisis The Evolving Nature of Violence in West Africa

West Africa has experienced evolving violence since independence, first by recording the highest share of military coup frequency in Africa between 1960 and 1989, then in the Mano River regional crisis of 1989-2003, and finally terrorism in the Lake Chad region and the Liptako-Gourma region from 2010 till date.

The report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in February 2023, titled Journey to Extremism in Africa, argues that ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ has now become ‘the global epicentre of violent extremist activity.’ According to the report, the region was the only one in the world to experience a worsening of the impact of terror activity in 2021, with 26 per cent of terrorist attacks and 48 per cent of deaths from violent extremism happening there. The report further shows that in 2021, more than one-third of the terrorism-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa occurred in just four countries, three of which are West African (Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali). Of the 135 administrative districts in Mali, Burkina Faso, and western Niger, nearly two-thirds experienced violent extremist attacks in 2022, a substantial growth from a figure of one-third in 2017.

This is, however, merely the latest stage of violence in West Africa. The region was the epicentre of military-led political instability (military coups) in Africa between 1956 and the 2000s and had the largest share of Africa’s military coups. That period ended with the inauguration of the practice of national conferences for transitioning to democracy. Benin’s National and Sovereign Conference of the Bone and Sinew of the Nation became, as the African Peer Review Mechanism argues, ‘the first of its kind in Africa’ which a number of other African states subsequently followed...