oiip

28.11.2024
10:30 - 12:00

oiip
Währinger Strasse 3/12, 1090 Wien

The protracted and widespread crisis that culminated in four coups d’état between 2020 and 2023 in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, substantially hampered the EU’s efforts in the Sahel region. Far from the EU’s dream of a ring of friends around Europe, with friendly and stable neighbors stretching from the Caucasus to the Sahara, Africa’s "coup belt" has arguably added its spark to the ring of fire around Europe.

Is this the end of European influence in Africa? Despite such a challenging context, the EU cannot afford security in the Sahel to collapse. The region remains important for the EU’s economic and geopolitical interests. The loss of reputation and trust in the EU in the region requires both an exit strategy in the short term and rethinking and repositioning Europe’s role as actor and partner in the long term.

What are EU’s alternatives in the Sahel? How to prevent its efforts in the region from being wasted? How should Europe position itself vis-à-vis the new military juntas? How to react to the growing leverage of other actors in the region, in particular Russia and China? How to prevent worsening security trends in the Sahel region to spill over to neighboring regions? These are some of the burning questions that this Panel Discussion will address.

Panelists:
DDr. Robert Zischg
Director, Sub-Sahara Africa & African Union, Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs

Dr. Fidelis Etah Ewane
Political Advisor to the EU Special Representative for the Sahel, European External Action Service (EEAS)

Dr. Amandine Gnanguênon
Senior Fellow and Head of the Geopolitics Program at the Africa Policy Research Institute (APRI)

Moderation:
Dr. Angela Meyer & Dr. Loïc Simonet, oiip

The discussion will be held in English

In cooperation with the Ministry of Defence bmlv.

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