Burkina Faso: The initiative of H.E. Kyelem de Tambela, for the mutualisation of efforts between Member States in the fight against terrorism.

The Accra initiative, it should be recalled, is a forum created in 2017 and bringing together Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso (Mali, Niger and recently Nigeria have the status of observer countries). The aim is to pool efforts between member states to better combat terrorism, which has gained a foothold in the Sahel and is advancing dangerously towards the coast.

But the Initiative had been somewhat lacking in initiatives, contenting itself until then with a few meetings and occasional operations with no real impact on the ground. The decision to set up a task force appears to be the beginning of the implementation of its ambitions. A first step in the right direction! But to see the first 2,000 men of the joint force on the ground, on the heels of the terrorists, it would be necessary to raise 550 million dollars by then.

To solve this cash flow problem, the states seem to have chosen to turn to donors, notably the European Union (EU) and England, to the great displeasure of the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, Apollinaire Kyelem de Tambela, who pleaded in Accra for an endogenous financing of the organisation in order not to be subjected to the moods of “generous donors”.

To do this, Kyelem de Tambela suggested levying a tax on the sale of certain products such as cotton, coffee and cocoa. This is easier said than done in the short term, even if the idea seems generous and would have allowed the Accra Initiative to avoid the G5 Sahel syndrome. This organisation suffered from unfulfilled commitments from financial partners, before Mali signed its death certificate by withdrawing from the institution.

Beyond the sinews of war, which remain an unresolved equation, we are no further ahead on the composition of the joint force. The Prime Minister’s Office initially announced that 2,000 foreign soldiers would be sent to Burkina Faso, but then retrograded the announcement. Faced with the outcry raised by this initial information on social networks, the government issued a statement in which it assured that “there has never been any question of deploying foreign troops on Burkinabe soil”.

Miss OLY