Morocco provides landlocked Burkina, Mali, and Niger with backwater access

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are military-ruled Sahelian nations. According to Morocco’s state news agency, their foreign ministers stated Monday they support a plan that would allow them to access international trade through Morocco’s Atlantic ports.

The statement stated that the foreign ministers met with King Mohammed VI of Morocco in Rabat and conveyed their nations’ stance.

With the formation of the Confederation of Sahel States (AES) last year, the West African countries, who are governed by juntas that have seized power through coups in recent years, left the regional organization ECOWAS.

Following ECOWAS’s trade restrictions on the three states, Morocco, a significant investor in West Africa’s banking and agricultural sectors, unveiled its trade access effort in November 2023.

“Diversifying our access to the sea” is facilitated by the initiative, Mali’s foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop told state media.

The gathering “is part of the strong and longstanding relations of the Kingdom with the three brotherly countries of the Alliance of Sahel States,” according to the news agency of Morocco.

The visit occurs as ties between Morocco’s regional competitor, Algeria, and the AES worsen.

Algeria has severed its relations with Morocco and is supporting the Polisario Front, which aims to establish an independent state in Western Sahara, a region Morocco claims as its own and where it is constructing a $1 billion port.

French and other Western soldiers were driven out by the new AES organization, which then looked to Russia for military assistance.

Five months after Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara was acknowledged by Paris, Morocco brokered the release of four French spies who had been detained in Burkina Faso in December.