Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger will soon issue new biometric passports, according to Mali’s military chief, Colonel Assimi Goita, as the junta-led republics seek to strengthen their alliance following their break from the regional body ECOWAS.<\/p>\n
The three Sahel nations, all under military leadership following a series of coups since 2020, formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September after cutting ties with old colonial power France and shifting toward Russia.<\/p>\n
In January, they announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States, accusing it of being dominated by France.<\/p>\n
In July, the allies strengthened their connections by forming the Confederation of Sahel States, which will be led by Mali for the first year and will include around 72 million people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the coming days, a new biometric passport of the AES will be put into circulation with the aim of harmonising travel documents in our common area,\u201d Goita said during a televised address late Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be working to put in place the infrastructure needed to strengthen the connectivity of our territories through transport, communications networks and information technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The announcement came a day before the three states are due to mark the one-year anniversary of the alliance\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n
The neighbours are all fighting Islamist warfare, which began in northern Mali in 2012 and extended to Niger and Burkina Faso by 2015.<\/p>\n
The unrest is believed to have killed hundreds and displaced millions throughout the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger will soon issue new biometric passports, according to Mali’s military chief, Colonel Assimi Goita, as the junta-led republics seek to strengthen their alliance following their break from the regional body ECOWAS. The three Sahel nations, all under military leadership following a series of coups since 2020, formed the Alliance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":48739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48740,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48733\/revisions\/48740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}