Accra Initiative: seven West African states discuss spillover of terrorism from Sahel

Seven West African coastal states held last week their first major talks — within the so-called Accra Initiative — on boosting cooperation against jihadist violence spilling over from the Sahel.

During the meeting in the Ghanian capital, leaders from Gulf of Guinea neighbor countries Benin, Ghana, Côte D’Ivoire and Togo discussed ways of preventing the spillover of terrorism from the Sahel region, as Islamist militants have gradually spread their activities from Niger to Burkina Faso and Mali to West Africa’s coastal states. The death toll of victims of the Islamic State-allied and Al Qaeda militants waging war in the Sahel keeps rising.

Five West African countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo — established the Accra Initiative in 2017 and Mali and Niger were admitted as observers before becoming members in 2019.

“This conference is timely,” the Ghanaian Minister of National Security told his guests. “It is timely because it affords us the rare opportunity to reflect on measures and on strategies deployed thus far towards addressing the threat of terrorism and violent extremism.”

The program promotes information sharing, training of security and intelligence personnel, and cross-border military operations in an often-volatile region. In the first quarter of 2022, Africa reportedly recorded 346 attacks, almost half of which were in the west of the continent. European forces and other peacekeeping missions including Ivorian and Egyptian soldiers had been operating in Mali for years as a bulwark against the spread of Islamist violence. However, many countries, including Côte D’Ivoire and Germany, have recently announced they would pull their forces out of Mali.