The heart of Africa’s Sahel lost to military juntas and poverty

Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso all have Islamist armed groups that seek absolute power, and ethnic minorities that feel oppressed. This region is doomed to suffer, and foreign military intervention will only intensify the suffering.

Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani, left, Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, and Mali’s Assimi Goïta. Eighty million people in these three penniless countries are ruled by overconfident young military officers whose skill rarely extend beyond small-unit tactics, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photographs courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

May 7, 2026

LONDON, U.K.— These countries are absolute losers by every metric: literacy (below half even among the young); GDP per capita (less than $100 a month); health (life expectancy around 60 years, versus low 80s in every major developed country except the United States.) They ...

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