Senegalese president calls for W African unity, stronger Burkina ties

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Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye made an impassioned plea for regional unity and deeper bilateral cooperation with Burkina Faso on Thursday, even as the West African nation’s junta stood firm on plans to quit the region’s main political and economic bloc.

On his first official trip to the Sahel countries threatening to leave the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Faye said he saw an “opening” to establish dialogue despite some nations’ rigid stances.

“But above all, I came to reaffirm my commitment, and Senegal’s commitment, to the brotherly people of Burkina Faso, and to invite him so that together we can work to strengthen relations between the two countries, on the commercial level, on the level of trade, on the level of integration and possible movement between the two countries, through the Malian stage too, for a better movement of goods and people, in the sense of achieving integration, which is very close to our hearts.”

Burkina Faso and its neighbours Mali and Niger, all run by military juntas, announced in January they would leave ECOWAS, reversing decades of regional integration.

“We have common challenges, and today it’s the security challenge that is the most pressing, the challenge of irregular migration, the challenge of the fight against human trafficking and the trafficking of illicit substances. And it’s only by working together, exchanging intelligence and carrying out joint operations that we’ll be able to get the upper hand on these modern-day scourges that are currently plaguing many countries and, as I said earlier, holding back their development.”

The three countries have formed a defence and cooperation pact known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and plan to establish a confederation.

“Because we have a historic responsibility, and the heritage of our founding fathers in relation to this region, to fight within ECOWAS, and together to ensure that ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States ) remains what it should never have ceased to be, that is to say, an integration body which has been held up as an example, which we must perpetuate, which we must strengthen, and which we must protect against all attempts to divert ECOWAS from its objective of African integration, and from what is its very nature, namely the people’s ECOWAS, and that it continues to be that, and that it continues above all to be a framework in which we address together the challenges I mentioned earlier.”

Senegal’s Faye, elected in March, said on Thursday he would try to persuade the Malian and Burkinabe juntas, led by Colonel Assimi Goita and Captain Ibrahim Traore, to remain in ECOWAS.

Goita on Thursday said he was “not totally inflexible” on the issue.

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