Are bilateral ties the route to renewed West African security cooperation?

Pending the outcome of ECOWAS-AES talks, cooperation between neighbouring states offers a starting point for rebuilding regional security ties.

Published on 22 October 2026 in ISS Today

By

Djiby Sow
Senior Researcher, ISS Regional Office for West Africa and the Sahel

Despite tensions between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Confederation of Sahel States (AES), recent advances reflect a broader regional trend. In August, Ghana and Burkina Faso signed a defence agreement, while Mali and Côte d’Ivoire agreed to delimit their shared border.

The withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from ECOWAS in January 2025 deeply fragmented West Africa’s institutional architecture, but did not end cooperation between individual states. Instead, relations are being pragmatically reorganised around countries’ security priorities, mainly through bilateral deals. This shift has been underway since 2025 and offers a concrete way to manage divisions without waiting for ongoing ECOWAS-AES negotiations to produce a political agreement.

Across several ECOWAS-AES fault lines, states are reactivating or deepening bilateral cooperation frameworks, agreements, joint commissions, or operational mechanisms, some of which predate the current regional crisis.

Joint patrols launched by Senegal and Mali in the Kayes region in 2025 build on a cooperation framework established in 2021. Mali and Guinea’s shared military commission met in April 2025 and June 2026, producing a memorandum of understanding that provides for intelligence sharing. And in August 2026, Ghana and Burkina Faso signed a defence pact after relaunching their Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation and signing seven cross-border cooperation agreements.

ECOWAS and AES member countries

These initiatives show that institutional fragmentation has not paralysed security cooperation altogether, even if the effectiveness of agreements is yet to be demonstrated. They also challenge the notion of a standstill, as bilateral mechanisms play an increasingly prominent role, enabling states to maintain or rebuild relations around their immediate security interests.

This window of opportunity should be maximised while ECOWAS and the AES negotiate a framework for future security cooperation. Talks could drag on, or even stall, given how politically and symbolically charged relations between the two blocs remain. Meanwhile, armed groups continue to exploit gaps in cooperation.

Rather than waiting for a new institutional agreement, regional actors and their partners could reverse the sequence. They could encourage states to cooperate where their interests converge, facilitate rapprochement where political tensions stand in the way, and over time, connect bilateral arrangements through flexible regional mechanisms.

Two of West Africa’s border areas need priority attention.

The first is northern Benin, where jihadist groups exploit gaps in neighbouring countries’ collaboration. Around the W-Arly-Pendjari complex, where Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger meet, violence remains intense. Further east, in the Benin-Niger-Nigeria triangle, weak coordination is enabling armed groups to expand. Discussions between Nigeria and Benin remain incomplete without Niger, and the rapprochement launched by Beninese President Romuald Wadagni during his June visit to Niamey has yet to reopen the border.

The second is the Sikasso-Korhogo-Bobo-Dioulasso (SKBo) cross-border area, where Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso meet. Political distrust between Abidjan and Ouagadougou continues to hinder cooperation on the ground, and progress between Côte d’Ivoire and Mali has yet to translate into joint security efforts commensurate with the risks.

This window of opportunity should be maximised, given that ECOWAS-AES negotiations could stall

Other regional actors could help unblock cooperation in these priority border areas. The Conseil de l’Entente, which brings together Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Togo, with Mali as an observer, already has a dialogue framework on security and border management. It could discreetly facilitate rapprochement among its members, particularly around the W-Arly-Pendjari complex and the SKBo area, in a format less exposed to ECOWAS-AES political tensions.

In the Benin-Niger-Nigeria zone, the African Union (AU) Mission for Mali and the Sahel (MISAHEL) could offer a complementary entry point. Its mandate, which will extend to Benin and Togo from 2027, and its AU affiliation independent of both ECOWAS and AES, make it well placed to facilitate dialogue among the three countries. The aim would be to gradually restore trust and help states identify concrete ways to restart joint security initiatives.

MISAHEL could share lessons from the Nouakchott Process, launched by the AU in 2013 to strengthen security cooperation in the Sahelo-Saharan region, with the priority border areas. Although the process is largely inactive, the mechanisms it promoted – intelligence sharing, cross-border coordination, joint patrols and regular exchanges between security officials – are precisely those that several states want to revive on an ad hoc basis in their bilateral cooperation.

An ECOWAS-AES framework could develop from working relations on the ground, rather than from the top down

This approach should remain flexible enough to adapt to the needs that states themselves identify. On one border, the main requirement may be restoring contact between military officials; on another, establishing intelligence-sharing protocols. Elsewhere, political conditions might allow states to go further, with more frequent joint patrols or more formal coordination between countries.

The goal would not be to replicate a regional mechanism, but to tailor these tools to the needs and possibilities specific to each border area. This variable-geometry approach is increasingly taking shape through the ‘coalition of the willing’ proposed by Ghana. Rather than waiting for a regional consensus that would require countries to progress at the same pace, the approach is moving towards implementation among states ready to move forward.

In the long run, an ECOWAS-AES framework could develop from working relations established on the ground, rather than from the top down through an institutional agreement. The resulting regional architecture may be less orderly than before, but more solid – precisely because it would be anchored in states’ concrete security interests and their need to cooperate.


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