The Sahel region is experiencing significant strategic realignments, driven by a resurgence of nationalism, the retrenchment of Western states previously influential in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a geographically expanding rivalry between Maghreb heavyweights Morocco and Algeria.
For decades, the Central Sahel’s security framework and economic paradigm were managed by France. This engendered dependency on Paris even as the latter failed to deliver stability. A newfound assertiveness by Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali following a series of military coups in 2021–2023 forced France out of the equation. Morocco and Algeria sprang into action to fill the resulting vacuum, and have since sought to use largescale infrastructural projects as a form of “economic statecraft.”
As part of this competition between Rabat and Algiers, ports and pipelines are no longer mere tools of development. They are also key to dueling Moroccan-Algerian visions of regional leadership and influence. The Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP), a decade-old Moroccan-Nigerian venture, and the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP), a long-gestating Algerian project, exemplify this phenomenon. If and when they become operational, the NMGP and the TSGP, each of which would pass through several countries, have the potential to redraw the map of interaction between the Sahel and the Maghreb. Notably, the NMGP has elicited interest from the United Arab Emirates for funding the project.
The creation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September 2023 established a new framework for security cooperation and mutual defense among Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. Moreover, AES member states’ withdrawal from traditional groupings such as the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) as well as the security-oriented (and now effectively defunct) G5 Sahel has granted them the flexibility to forge new working relationships, and to do so as a bloc. This makes the AES greater than the sum of its parts, and an attractive prospective partner for Rabat and Algiers. Its emergence as a vehicle for Sahel agency has inadvertently offered Morocco and Algeria an opportunity to extend their respective sway—and their rivalry.
In this context, Morocco’s Royal Atlantic Initiative, launched in 2023, aims to provide two of the three Central Sahel states (all of which are landlocked) with direct access to the Atlantic Ocean through Moroccan seaports. The land corridors will terminate at Morocco’s Dakhla Port, a planned $1.2 billion deep-water facility intended to process large cargo volume. For Mali, which seeks to reduce its dependency on ECOWAS routes, the Atlantic Initiative opens new doors for development, particularly as the country’s economy is heavily reliant on exports. Burkina Faso is in a similar position, with its gold and cotton sectors standing to benefit from quicker and greater exposure to global markets. Meanwhile, Niger, has much to gain from the TSGP: Niamey is expected to hold a 10 percent stake in the Nigeria-Niger-Algeria pipeline, enabling it to strengthen its domestic gas supply while generating revenue.
In short, the new geography drawn by ports, pipelines, and corridors across the African continent offers significant economic benefits. These span domestic infrastructure improvements, energy and market access, employment creation, and regional integration. Engagement with energy and transport megaprojects is part of a broader strategic calculation by the new regimes governing Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. The aim is to ensure their economic viability and political durability in the face of numerous challenges, including foreign backlash to the coups that brought these regimes to power.
However, the success of these projects depends in large part on sensitive financial and security considerations. Instability in the region may dissuade potential investors from becoming involved. Additionally, the Central Sahel states’ own financial capacity remains limited, even with the announcement in July 2025 of the establishment of the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development, which aims to enhance AES members’ fiscal independence. Indeed, megaprojects demand precisely the stability that the Sahel cannot guarantee, leaving their realization uncertain.
Still, there may be something more important than guaranteeing stability: forging strategic partnerships with two or more powerful and resource-rich neighbors, even if the latter are at odds with each other. Although neither a landlocked state nor an AES member, Mauritania, with its geostrategic location as a bridge between North Africa and the Sahel, is managing to strike this careful balancing act. Neutrality has historically animated Mauritania’s approach to the Western Sahara conflict, over which Morocco and Algeria are at loggerheads. Today, Nouakchott is guided by much the same outlook in other areas of its foreign policy. Wary of its heavy dependence on donor funding and foreign-dominated extractive industries, which account for over half of its exports, Nouakchott has adopted a strategy of partner diversification and hedging as a means of securing autonomy and stability.
For example, Mauritania has endorsed Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative and signed several agreements with Rabat on fisheries, electricity and renewable energy cooperation, and industrial cooperation. Concurrently, however, it has deepened strategic and economic ties with Algiers, collaborating with the latter on a road project linking Algeria’s Tindouf and Mauritania’s Zouerat, a joint free-trade zone in Tindouf, and a maritime line connecting Algiers and Nouakchott. This strategy has enabled Mauritania to capitalize on economic opportunities while avoiding antagonizing either Algeria or Morocco. It is a strategy that Nouakchott is unlikely to alter absent a major realignment in regional power dynamics.
Mauritania’s approach is also instructive in that it may well indicate what lies ahead for the up-and-coming nations of the Sahel. Attempts by Morocco and Algeria to redraw the geopolitical map in their clashing quests for greater influence in Africa are bound to have consequences for the region. Yet it is not their rivalry alone that will determine its future. Just as it was local power structures—particularly military-backed governments—that ejected the French from Central Sahel military and economic arrangements, so too will these same structures or their successors shape the trajectory of Moroccan and Algerian regional involvement.
In other words, Sahel-Maghreb ties hinge less on who builds the longest pipeline and more on decisions in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, as well as Mauritania. Should these states follow through on their expressions of intent in pursuing individual projects with Morocco or Algeria, or both, Rabat and Algiers will more than likely emerge as regional powerbrokers. If, on the other hand, the three newly assertive Sahel countries (and possibly Mauritania) enter into these projects with a coordinated strategy, they may well find themselves in a position to leverage their unity and geography for economic and even political clout. The next decade will probably prove decisive in determining what happens.
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