Almost 10 years of conflict in Mali

We started our project in Mali 10 2014. Since 2012 however, the country has been facing an armed conflict that has now spread over nearly two-thirds of the territory; and has experienced two successive putsches, in 2020 and 2021. Mali depends largely on agriculture, livestock, and fishing to feed its population and ensure its economic health. Here, agriculture alone represents 45% of the gross national product (GNP) and employs around 80% of the active population, according to the Malian Ministry of the Environment.

Unfortunately, the situation only got worse. NGOs rang the alarm bell last December. Over that period, the famine would have been multiplied by three in the country. The issue at stake: insecurity due to the armed conflict, forcing Malians to flee their homes, abandon their fields and preventing families from moving freely, accessing humanitarian aid or surrounding markets added to the Covid-19 crisis. The junta in power cannot change much about it: between the fierce embargo decreed by ECOWAS, the monthly bills of Wagner's mercenaries (nearly 10 million euros, without considering the predation of mining resources, including gold), the officers are handcuffed.

And to further aggravate this vicious circle for populations, climate change is accelerating: the drought is estimated to "have resulted in the loss of more than 225,000 hectares of fields, affecting more than 3 million people". In Mali, the signs of climate change are visible and multiple: an upheaval in rainfall with floods followed by waves of abnormal drought, the advance of the desert, episodes of heat or violent winds. More frequent and more extreme, these climatic hazards suggest a risk of food insecurity that is now systemic.

While its population should double in twenty years, this galloping demography creates strong pressure around resources, in addition to the effects of climate change. The country must be able to produce more, while preserving the environment. Especially since the IPCC forecasts are more worrying here in Mali, and more generally in the Sahel, than in the rest of the world.

We can hope that the population will find the means to trigger a favorable dynamic, and well before the junta returns power to civilians allowing the lifting of the sanctions which are strangling the country. It is planned in 2026 inch' Allah.