DECEMBER 2024
Europe, Beyond Its
Southern Border
By Carlota G. Encina
Introduction
The Sahel is acquiring a new importance due to recent events that have exponentially increased its
capacity to inuence the stability and security of the Mediterranean. It is an inhospitable area that is
often discussed interchangeably with North Africa. But the Sahel and North Africa are quite distinct and
are facing dierent realities, making it dicult to formulate a single stratey for both regions. North
Africa will likely continue its current trajectory of closer integration with Europe, while the Sahel will
continue to lag behind in terms of modernization, integration, security and stability, and economic
development. The Sahel, therefore, currently requires the most attention from both the European
Union and NATO, as well as from southern European nations.
The Sahel
The rst diculty in addressing the multiple challenges facing the region lies in dening its
boundaries. Sahel means “edge” or “coast” in Arabic, and from this point of view, the Sahel would be
a 5,000 kilometer strip stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. But these boundaries have
no cultural, historical, or economic meaning and include 12 very dierent countries. For this reason,
it is more usual to use the term to refer to a group of ve countries with common historical, economic,
cultural, and social characteristics: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Historically, these
areas were part of the great Sahelian empires based on trans-Saharan trade. They were subsequently
colonized by France, which left a common political and cultural legacy. This legacy currently coexists
with the fundamental role of Islam as the majority religion throughout the region.
In 2014, the ve countries established the G5 Sahel, born as a result of the conviction of these
governments (and of European pressure) about the need to jointly implement a comprehensive
approach to ensure the conditions for peace, development, security, and governance. In 2017, a
joint force was added to the organization to coordinate counterterrorism eorts, aiming to curb the
expansion of armed groups that seriously threaten regional security. The ecacy of this organization is
