The Algerian regime has donated Niger four Russian military helicopters alongside ammunition and spare parts in a bid to mend ties with Niamey and restore its fading luster in the region.
The Algerian ruling junta made this politically-motivated grant worth millions of US dollars, while leaving their own people suffering from severe shortage of basic foods, unprecedented vehicle tire crisis and facing deadly summer forest fires.
Algeria has Africa’s second largest gas reserve, but its oppressed people continue to suffer from shortages of milk, petrol, drinking water, basic food, vehicle spare parts…
Billions of petrodollars of Algerian taxpayers have been spent by the rulers on Polisario and on a lost cause for five-decades, while the country’s rusty buses crash in toxic rivers due to poor infrastructures, its decaying hospitals lack vital equipment, and its oppressed youth are muzzled.
After failing to subdue its southern Sahel countries, the Algerian authorities are now using soft-power and cash-diplomacy to restore ties with Sahel nations in new regional and shifting geo-political landscape.
Since the beginning of 2026, Algeria has stepped up its diplomatic outreach to Niger and Burkina Faso in an attempt to reassert its role in the Sahel. Relations with the three Alliance of Sahel States (AES) members – Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali – had deteriorated after Algerian forces shot down a Malian drone near border in April 2025.
All three AES confederation countries condemned the incident as a hostile act and withdrew their ambassadors after Algeria recalled its envoys from Bamako, Niamey and Ouagadougou for consultations. Tensions subsequently escalated between Bamako and Algiers, with both countries closing their airspace and trading sharp exchanges during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.
After a year of strained relations between Algeria and all its southern neighbors, ties began to improve in early 2026 as Algiers changed its confrontation strategy and bowed to Sahel countries, France and Spain hoping to get geostrategic gains and end international isolation.
But many experts wonder whether the Algerian regime gas leverage will work and how long its check-diplomacy will hold in the new world order taking shape.
