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GWYNNE DYER: Why a region in the Sahel is doomed to suffer for generations

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are penniless, ruled by military, and face Islamist armed groups that seek absolute power

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.)

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They also account for over half of all terrorism-related deaths in the world.

It’s three landlocked countries stuck together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the Sahel, the part of the Sahara that didn’t completely dry out when the rest of it suddenly turned into open desert about 5,000 years ago.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso: to be born there, for the vast majority, is to be born poor.

They rarely make the news because poverty is not news. When they do feature, it’s usually because of military coups, like the three that brought young military officers to power in Mali in 2021, in Burkina Faso in 2022, and in Niger in 2023.

But nobody cared — not even Ecowas, the Economic Community of West........

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