“53 countries, 53 flags; that’s sovereignty by the flag.” – Youlouka Damiba, general secretary of Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara Memorial, opening his address on the Alliance of Sahel States
On paper, independence – in practice, currencies controlled by former colonisers, armies bound by secret agreements, and economies locked into exporting raw materials. The AES’s answer isn’t reform, but a total breaking away from the old arrangement.
Damiba lays out the seven fronts where Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are fighting together: currency and finance, the narrative itself, cultural and spiritual reclamation, confrontation with religiously-framed armed groups, security built on their own terms rather than an outsourced colonial army, local production instead of raw-material export, and diplomacy that isn’t run through Paris.
1.7 million square kilometres, one confederation, four founding pillars: a self-managed economy, organised popular power, decolonised education, and popular defence.