The Rise and Fall of the G5 Sahel: Extraversion Strategies and the Limits of Regional Security Cooperation

This article examines the rise and fall of the G5 Sahel, a regional security organization created in 2014 by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, with strong support from external partners. While the G5 Sahel quickly became a pillar of counterterrorism efforts in the region, it collapsed less than a decade later following the withdrawal of several member states after successive military coups. The article argues that the G5 Sahel functioned less as a vehicle for autonomous regional security cooperation than as an instrument through which Sahelian regimes managed asymmetric relationships with external actors. By extending the concept of extraversion beyond the national level to regional organizational frameworks, we show how participation in the G5 allowed member states to convert regional cooperate on into diplomatic recognition, military assistance, and financial resources. The collapse of the organization is thus best understood not as an institutional failure per se, but as the unravelling of a regional arrangement whose foundations were inherently political and reversible.