Atlas Uncovers Secret Sahara

By Imrane Binoual in Casablanca
for Magharebia

The Sahel-Sahara’s culture of mobility and nomadism must be taken into account when looking for security solutions, a new report urges.

The changing nature of insecurity calls for an integrated regional response, according to the new “Atlas of the Sahara-Sahel”.

Published in December by the Sahel and West Africa Club, a France-based initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the atlas looks at the region in a new light.

With 150 maps, the atlas deciphers the complexity of the movements of people and goods. It covers migration, terrorism and smuggling, along with regional and international stabilisation initiatives.

The atlas “sends out a signal to the political leaders of the countries concerned, in the Maghreb and West Central Africa, and the leaders of the major international institutions – the UN, the EU, the World Bank, etc. – and of all the bodies currently defining and working out strategies for the Sahel to stabilise and develop this area over the long term”, according to club head Laurent Bossard, the co-ordinator of the project.

The aim is to show that complex dynamics drive the region, he said.

“It is absolutely essential to consider the regional, transnational and cross-border dimension of the challenges,” Bossard said. “We have tried to apply those arguments to every area, and particularly the areas of co-operation, security and population mobility.”

Bossard said terrorists, smugglers and organised crime groups have seized upon the “culture of nomadism and mobility”.

“The problem is that the responses to these dangers have struggled to take advantage of and adapt to such a culture of mobility,” he continued. “Indeed, because it’s mobile, it requires extreme levels of collaboration between all the countries concerned.”

Kadré Desiré Ouédraogo, president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said building roads across the Sahara showed a willingness to develop economic co-operation with the Maghreb, increase trade and build a common future.

“Only that kind of willingness can enable us to work together to overcome the challenges of stabilisation and development of the vast desert spaces that we share,” he wrote on the OECD’s website.

Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, chief executive officer of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Planning and Co-ordinating Agency, said the African Union’s strategy for the Sahel region was built on governance, security and development. But this tripartite approach is under-implemented in regional development plans, with security issues often isolated, he said.

“The Sahel-Saharan areas highlight problems that link security and development issues,” he said.

But club President François-Xavier De Donnea is optimistic. At the December 19th, 2014 launch of the atlas in Brussels, he said: “With the right set-up and co-ordination of commercial and political incentives, the Sahara-Sahel could flourish.”