The Sahel beyond the conflict: real economic and social development

While the Sahel remains plagued by recurrent conflicts, there are nevertheless positive signs of economic and social development in the countries of the region. Assessing these positive trends, as well as persistent vulnerabilities, is essential to better understand the region’s development and identify future challenges.
Sahelian countries are making clear progress on the human development front, as measured by the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI has risen sharply in the Sahel since the 1990s, on average by 1.9% per year, three times higher than the world average.
The development indicators of this index include the health of populations, which in the Sahel has improved significantly: life expectancy at birth has increased from an average of 49 years in 1990 to 61 years in 2018.
Another component of the HDI is per capita income, which has also increased significantly (by about 67% compared to 1990) while, at the same time, the rate of extreme poverty has decreased (by 75% in the 1990s to 41% in 2018). The increase in wealth has therefore also benefited the poorest.
Despite this, the countries of the region are still badly positioned in the latest HDI rankings (in the last 30 places for the most part). There is therefore still work to be done to strengthen the region’s very fragile health systems, in particular access to maternal health care, and to combat recurrent undernourishment (which affects one in five people in the Sahel) and malnutrition (which affects a third of children under five).
However, the region continues to be composed mainly of low-income countries, where progress on the poverty front has been undermined by the effects of the Covid-19 crisis.
Major challenges remain in women’s education and empowerment
But it is above all on the education front that a major effort still needs to be made. Education indicators are considerably lower in the region: only one in two young people is literate (compared to an average of more than three in four in Africa) and only one in three students completes secondary education.
Access to education – and more broadly to basic services – is a major issue in the region, in a context of strong population growth (+3% per year), exacerbated by the fact that the increase in enrollment rates has been accompanied by a decline in the quality of education.
The position of women in the economy must be strengthened. Although women are a vital force in the Sahel – playing a central role in food security and the resilience of societies – gender inequalities remain very marked and hinder the empowerment of women.
The region has the highest average fertility rate in the world (5.5 children per woman and 6.7 in Niger). As a result, the Sahel could see its population double within 25 years, which means that the authorities will have to redouble their efforts to meet the growing needs of the population.
The Sahel is one of the most dynamic regions in Africa, but the structural transformation of its economies is slow.
Sahelian GDP quadrupled between 1990 and 2020, while in recent years the region has experienced one of the highest economic growth rates in Africa (about +4.8% per year on average since 2010).
Several factors can explain this dynamic: the good performance of certain key sectors and favorable rainfall, high investments and catch-up effects in certain sectors, the rise in the price of extractive raw materials important for the region (such as gold), the existence of areas less exposed to security issues and a moderate level of indebtedness (56% of GDP in 2020 against 66% for the whole of Africa).
Despite this, the structure of the Sahelian economies has changed little since the 1990s. The service sector continues to represent nearly half of added value and industry less than a quarter. The agricultural sector, on the other hand, remains essential, accounting for around 30% of added value since the 1990s and employing on average more than one in two Sahelians.
The development of agriculture is therefore crucial to meet the major challenges of the region: the economic challenge of diversification and economic transformation, the food challenge in a context of strong demographic growth, the social challenge in territories where the fragility social and poverty require jobs creation and added value, and the environmental challenge.
In this context, the Sahelian countries remain highly dependent on the outside. The export base of these countries being weak and the import needs being high, the countries of the region present significant current account deficits (about 8% of GDP on average over 2017-2019).
To cover these deficits, the mobilization of external aid is crucial. The Sahel is the region of Africa that receives the most official development assistance in relation to GDP (7% on average), and remittances from the diaspora are consistently high (6% of GDP). Low foreign direct investment, on the other hand (less than 4 percent of GDP), unsurprisingly reflects an unconducive business environment.
Conflicts: the great challenge of governance
The Sahel has been plagued by recurring conflicts since 2012, with devastating human, political, economic and social consequences.
The conflicts have also put pressure on public finances, due to the reduction of the tax base and the increase in military expenditure (nearly 9% of total expenditure, the highest level in Africa). Above all, the increase in military spending is at the expense of social and development spending, which further accentuates the negative economic impact of conflicts.
In addition to the economic and social difficulties faced by the people of the Sahel, these conflicts are largely the result of the insufficient presence of the State over whole sections of the territory. The capacity of Sahelian states to provide basic public services and to control their territories is generally very limited.
The number of state employees per capita is between 3 and 10 per 1,000 in Chad, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali and Niger, compared to 160 in Norway, for example. This is why measures aimed at strengthening governance are of fundamental importance.
The dynamics at work in the Sahel and the progress made in terms of development show that the region cannot be reduced to a single crisis zone. But to enable the countries of the region to achieve lasting peace and development, at least five action levers seem to be priorities: preventing and containing violent conflicts; improving governance; empowerment of women and girls; supporting young people; and supporting the restructuring of agricultural value chains and the development of the private sector and entrepreneurship.