West Africa at a Crossroads: Fostering Stability After Aid Cuts

In February, France withdrew all its troops from a military base outside Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, the latest in a series of French military withdrawals across its former colonies in West Africa. Despite decades of efforts to counter militant groups in the Sahel and maintain regional stability, violent extremism in the region has only grown, spilling into coastal West Africa. Increasing opposition to France’s ineffectual military interventions and perceptions of neocolonialism inspired a region-wide surge in anti-France sentiment. Coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger instituted military juntas that swiftly terminated military relations with Western countries. Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal—longstanding Western partners on counterterrorism—have also moved to terminate defense pacts with France.

A spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that France’s new strategy for the region would involve “fewer bases, more schools” (translated), a shift welcomed by locals and regional experts alike given the region’s desperate humanitarian needs. In Burkina Faso alone, an estimated 2.1 million people are internally displaced and 3.5 million (roughly 15 percent of the population) require food aid. However, France has yet to follow through on this transition. Instead of increasing aid, France’s response to the ascension of an adversarial regime, including in Burkina Faso, has included the suspension of official development assistance (ODA). French ODA disbursements to the conflict-affected countries of the region fell by more than 45 percent between 2022 and 2023 according to OECD data (and by over 62 percent to Burkina Faso).

(For the purposes of this blog, “West Africa and the Sahel” refers to ECOWAS countries and those that have recently withdrawn (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which formed the Alliance of Sahel States last year). The conflict-affected countries of the region are Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria by the IMF’s FY25 listing.)

France’s stated intention to transition from military to aid spending also contradicts its new budgetary priorities. In February 2024, France announced a €742 million ($806 million) or 12.5 percent cut to its 2024 development aid budget. At the time, a diplomatic source said that savings would come from reducing programs in countries affected by coups in Africa and especially the Sahel. While this cut was France’s largest in a decade, it was quickly surpassed by this year’s subsequent 37 percent cut of €2.1 billion ($2.27 billion). France’s aid budget cuts are not unique among major Western donors and reflect new and competing priorities, fiscal pressures, and plans to increase defense spending. Given that France has historically been the second-largest bilateral aid provider to West Africa and the Sahel (the first being the US), the cuts threaten to exacerbate ongoing cycles of violence, displacement, and instability.

The region is also subject to vast cuts from its largest bilateral aid provider. On March 10, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83 percent of USAID programs had been officially cancelled, with remaining programs absorbed by the State Department. CGD analysis of a list of cancelled and retained USAID awards shared with Congress breaks down the cuts by country, finding roughly $852 million (29.5 percent of total US aid to the region) in cuts to West Africa and the Sahel. This does not include cuts to non-USAID foreign aid programs, cuts to regional programs, or cuts beyond those listed (and many are unaccounted for), meaning it is likely an underestimate of the eventual size of the cuts. Given the massive layoffs and deliberate gutting of the agency, it is also unclear whether the infrastructure needed to run the remaining programs is still in place.

Beyond France and the US, other major bilateral donors include the EU, Germany, and the UK, which together supplied $2.67 billion in aid to the region in 2023. All three have recently moved to cut their aid budgets in favor of defense. Multilateral organizations will also suffer from aid cuts in donor counties, with less funding ultimately passed along to recipient countries. The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) is the largest bi- or multilateral aid provider to 13 of the region’s 20 countries and managed to keep donor contributions stable during a challenging 21^st replenishment last fall. While considered a win under the circumstances, the Trump administration intends to cut $800 million or 20 percent from the US’s earlier $4 billion pledge to IDA. There are also indications that the United Kingdom’s pledge of $2.7 billion is under review. The African Development Bank (AfDB), another major regional donor, is also facing cuts, as the Trump administration plans to halt funding to the African Development Fund (ADF), the bank’s concessional financing arm that supports the continent’s poorest countries. With political cover from the US and mounting fiscal pressures, other countries could also slash contributions to multilateral aid providers, shrinking a crucial source of finance for West Africa.

Rising conflict and falling ODA

As rates of conflict and fragility rise across the region, aid flows decline. These reductions threaten to eliminate life-saving health and food assistance programs, worsening already dire social and humanitarian conditions, particularly in the Sahel and bordering areas. Programs from USAID and AFD, the US and French development agencies respectively, are primarily delivered in-kind by implementing partners, including for-profit contractors and nongovernmental organizations. To restore service provision, countries affected by cuts either have to rapidly contract with the implementing agency or build capacity of their own. But reduced fiscal space and elevated debt service costs hinder countries’ ability to increase social spending. Since 2013, West African and Sahelian countries averaged fiscal deficits of 4.9 percent of GDP. In addition to the pandemic and food and energy price increases, instability and violence generate significant macroeconomic and budgetary costs t drain available resources. Spillovers from fragile and conflict-affected states in the Sahel add to fiscal pressures in coastal West Africa by interrupting cross-border trade, increasing migration, and triggering a rise in military spending, which was already among the highest in the world relative to GDP. West African countries have had to finance their increasing deficits during a period of high interest rates and an appreciating dollar, and six countries in the region are at high risk of debt distress according to the IMF’s latest debt sustainability analysis. Over the longer term, vulnerability to climate change is enormous in the region, with Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger among the most seven climate-vulnerable countries in the world, as identified by our CGD colleagues.

Given West African countries’ limited capacity to replace cancelled aid programs with domestic spending, aid cuts will mean the end of crucial health, education, and social programs. CGD analysis finds that US bilateral health assistance alone is more than 10 percent of domestic health expenditure in 11 countries in West Africa and the Sahel, including 93 percent in Liberia and 52 percent in Sierra Leone, while over 80 percent of USAID’s reproductive health, maternal and child health, and pandemic preparedness programs have been cut. The lack of accessible health and other services will inevitably exacerbate the ongoing cycles of violent extremism and displacement, and terrorists and militant groups will exploit the absence of basic needs and economic hardship to increase their membership. Amid rising rates of conflict and violence, governments will court alternative security partners and have already turned to Russia and the Wagner Group, which has rebranded as the Africa Corps and has replaced French forces in countering insurgency in Mali.

A new strategy

Rising rates of violence and fragility should not be met with disengagement. Instead, these trends demand a recalibrated approach that addresses the structural causes of conflict. Clearly, the wide-ranging counterterrorism and military efforts led by France (with support from the US) were not the answer, serving only to inflame local resentment and fuel the expansion of militant groups. A de-prioritization of security is long overdue, as is a rethinking of the role of foreign aid in peacebuilding and development. While foreign aid is no panacea—and has too often been tied to narrow political or security objectives—abrupt and haphazard cuts to life-saving programs will only worsen existing cycles of violence and displacement. Numerous studies find that extremism proliferates when humanitarian and economic needs go unmet. A new strategy that addresses the underlying causes of the region’s instability would start by providing sustainable and consistent access to essential public services.

In an era of declining ODA, the question is how to finance access to health, education, food, and other basic needs. In the short term, countries anticipating sharp declines in ODA should move quickly to identify the most critical programs and mobilize funding from domestic revenue streams or alternative external sources. The IMF and World Bank should work with West African countries to ensure that ODA cuts do not translate into lapses in social protection for the most vulnerable. In the medium term, these institutions can also help countries boost domestic revenues and spend more efficiently, helping them to sustainably fund and administer social programs. These efforts should also help countries insulate social spending from volatility in natural resource revenues, which are prone to frequent shocks and price fluctuations. There is likely scope for improving tax collection and, in some cases, scaling revenues by implementing excise or other easy-to-administer taxes. Improved revenue generation can help countries strengthen and expand their administrative capacities, particularly in fragile rural areas. Weak or nonexistent local governments have allowed non-state actors to appropriate state functions, and remaining aid programs should engage local governments directly and deliberately aim to strengthen self-sufficiency. Empowering local administrations to deliver essential services will be key to building trust in institutions and mitigating recruitment by violent extremist groups.

In the long term, stability in West Africa and the Sahel will depend on fostering a healthy private sector that can generate employment, inclusive development, and higher revenues. Economic exclusion is closely linked to radicalization and extremism, and with youth populations expected to grow rapidly, the risks will only multiply. Across the Sahel, high levels of informality and infrastructure gaps hinder private sector growth. In an era of reduced concessional finance, domestic governments and MDBs should prioritize small- and medium-scale interventions that can boost human capital in the most vulnerable areas. The World Bank and IMF should advise governments on creating a regulatory and investment climate that specifically targets the barriers to private sector development in fragile areas. Likewise, these institutions should pursue infrastructure projects that lower transport costs and connect isolated rural communities to regional trade hubs. Deepening regional integration will boost trade and investment, as well as help to stabilize the border areas that have become hubs for violent extremism.

Increased economic activity and lower rates of conflict can create self-reinforcing cycles of growth, giving countries the fiscal space to expand their administrative capacity, provide for basic needs, and invest in infrastructure and human capital. Encouraging this virtuous cycle should be the aim of international actors, not short-term, security-focused interventions that have triggered a backlash and prolonged instability. Lasting peace and resilience in West Africa and the Sahel will ultimately depend on addressing the structural drivers of conflict. While protecting vulnerable communities remains critical in the short term, fostering inclusive economic growth is the only sustainable path to creating the fiscal space needed to gradually replace aid.

The authors are grateful to Clemence Landers, Liliana Rojas-Suarez, Nancy Lee, and Sanjeev Gupta for their insightful comments.