Great Hunger: Failed Interventions Have Inflamed Mali’s Food Crisis

The French, already distrusted as Mali’s former colonizers, left a trail of destruction and failure in their wake, which fed into a general hum of anti-Western sentiment in the country and throughout the Sahel region. This ultimately found expression through a series of military coups from 2020 to 2023 in, not only Mali, but also in Niger and Burkina Faso—both of which are former French colonies. In Mali, General Assimi Goïta seized power and has since moved to consolidate his rule by banning political parties, arresting journalists and critics, and indefinitely delaying elections, all while justifying his authoritarian rule by proclaiming Malian “sovereignty” and promising to beat back the jihadi insurgents. But, even on these narrow, self-imposed terms, his regime is failing.

As France and the West pulled back from Mali, the Malian military junta, far from protecting its sovereignty, has turned to other imperial powers in the form of China and Russia. While China’s role in Mali has been primarily economic, providing loans and infrastructure investment while establishing itself as a major player in the country’s extraction industry, Russia’s presence has been extremely violent. The infamous Wagner mercenary group was welcomed by the junta to help fight the Islamist insurgency, while, in exchange, it was provided with access to the country’s minerals. But Wagner’s intervention, too, has been disastrous for the people of Mali.

Known the world over for its use of extreme violence, Wagner, along with the Malian junta it was paid to support, committed multiple atrocities throughout its time in the country, while, at the same time, failing to defeat the jihadist insurgency. It announced that it was pulling out of Mali earlier this year, but its retreat was more complicated than it might first have seemed. While Wagner was said to be leaving, Russia’s Africa Corps, a separate entity that is ostensibly controlled more directly by Moscow than Wagner ever was, remained in place. Wagner and Africa Corps are not the same thing, but Telegram chats used by Russian mercenaries, and seen by Reuters, seem to suggest that up to 80 percent of the Africa Corps in Mali is actually composed of former Wagner fighters. In any case, Russia remains a key player in the country, but it, like the West before it, is struggling to defeat the jihadis.

There are worrying signs that the United States, under Donald Trump, may soon revert back to its previously failed playbook of supporting a counterinsurgency in Mali. It was reported in September 2025 that the U.S. was considering increasing its intelligence sharing and military support to the military juntas of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which, in a typically Trumpian logic of deal-making, it would do in exchange for greater access to their critical minerals. But history has shown that trying to deal with these countries’ problems in such a narrow, militaristic way is likely to backfire. Sharing intel with the Malian junta may well allow it to assassinate more Islamist leaders, but they will be replaced—look at how Hamas and Hezbollah, while weakened, have nonetheless continued to reproduce themselves, despite Israel’s assassination campaigns against their leaders. In lands where prospects are low and suffering is high, imperial violence against insurgents, without any deeper consideration of what might be fueling their actions in the first place, is likely to generate discontent rather than stem it.

Malian society has been severely degraded through years of insurgency, state violence and foreign intervention. People are impoverished and hungry, and the situation is unlikely to be alleviated by the junta’s decision to, alongside the military regimes of neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, leave Africa’s largest political and economic union, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). This so-called “Sahelexit” happened earlier this year, after Ecowas had imposed sanctions upon each of the three countries following their respective coups. Justified on the basis that Ecowas prohibits unconstitutional changes of government, the sanctions, by imposing pain upon the populations of those countries, badly backfired. While food was ostensibly exempt from the sanctions, they nonetheless drove food prices up by increasing logistical challenges to trade and transport. They were lifted in 2024, but there was no going back by that point. The three countries left the union.

Sahelexit is unlikely to make life easier on its own terms. All three of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are landlocked, so, as a consequence of Sahelexit, gaining access to ports in neighboring countries will now be more complicated. Trade with Ecowas members will become trickier and subject to barriers that did not previously exist, while there is even a possibility that the three countries will be excluded from the Ecowas West African Power Pool, which seeks to increase electricity access among its members. All of these factors may drive food prices up, in a region where the costs of a healthy diet are already 110 percent higher than the minimum wage.

Access to food will remain a terrifying challenge in Mali, already one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, subject to rising temperatures, drought, and, conversely, to flooding when it does rain. Agriculture is under severe stress, which, as well as limiting the amount of food that can be produced, also badly affects people’s livelihoods, given that around 80 percent of Malians work in the sector. It also generates greater competition for resources, which, in turn, feeds into the cycle of violence that the country has long found itself tapped in.

The imperial world continues to view Mali as a source of critical resources to be exploited. Its problems are understood, not as a social and environmental crisis, but rather as a security problem to be remedied with more violence. Until that changes, it is difficult to see how Mali’s suffering may be eased. Too many people in Mali and the region around it lack access to food, water, healthcare, housing, work and education. Major investments in these areas are needed, but, in a highly militarized world becoming ever more so, powering conflict will instead take precedence. Battles will be fought, blockades will be imposed, and ordinary people will continue to go hungry.