The Sahel — the vast semi-arid belt stretching from Senegal to Sudan — has become the world's most turbulent geopolitical theatre, with seven military coups in three years fundamentally redrawing the region's security map and triggering a great-power competition that analysts compare to the Cold War scramble for Africa.
Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, and Gabon have all experienced military takeovers since 2021. The new military governments have, with striking uniformity, expelled French and European Union security forces, abrogated military cooperation agreements with Western powers, and pivoted toward Russia's Wagner Group — now rebranded as the Africa Corps — as their primary security partner.
The Wagner Calculus
Russia's security offering to Sahel juntas is built on a straightforward transactional logic: military protection and political support without conditionality. Unlike Western partners who attach human rights requirements and governance standards to security cooperation, the Africa Corps makes no such demands, offering instead the brutal but effective counterinsurgency methodology it has deployed in Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic.