The French government has announced the suspension of its development aid in Mali, amid tensions with the military junta that has controlled the country since the 2020 coup, in part because of the deployment of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, owned by an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
«Faced with the attitude of the Malian junta, which has allied itself with the Wagner militia, we believe that the conditions are not in place to continue our public development aid projects and that the risk of a change in their object is very high,» said a French Foreign Ministry spokesman.
However, he stressed that Paris «maintains emergency aid and humanitarian action in the African country». French diplomatic sources quoted by the newspaper ‘Le Monde’ have specified that the decision was taken «two or three weeks ago», a measure that has provoked criticism from a group of non-governmental organizations.
Coordination Sud, made up of 35 NGOs active in the African country, has sent an e-mail in which it warned that the measure «will mean the stoppage of essential activities (…) for the benefit of populations in a situation of great poverty».
The organizations have detailed that the suspension of development aid by France jeopardizes 70 development projects planned in Mali, where 7.5 million people, 35 percent of the population, need to receive humanitarian aid in order to survive.
The announcement comes days after French President Emmanuel Macron made official the end of operation ‘Barkhane’ in the Sahel, amid the withdrawal of international troops due to tensions with the military junta over its postponements of elections following the August 2020 and May 2021 coups.
The junta, headed by Assimi Goita, is facing increasing international isolation. Indeed, the United Kingdom and Ivory Coast recently announced the withdrawal of their troops from the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), a decision prompted in Yamoussoukro’s case by the arrest in July of nearly 50 Ivorian military personnel at Bamako airport.
In addition, the Government of the Czech Republic has confirmed that it will close its Embassy in Bamako, a decision related to the end of the activities of the Czech Republic Army in the framework of the European Union (EU) training mission in the African country due to tensions with the junta.
«This mission ends before the end of the year and the soldiers are withdrawing from Mali due to political turbulence,» Czech State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Radek Rubes maintained in early November, while lamenting that Mali «is totally distancing itself from Europe and European values.»
