Grassroots Geopolitical Imaginaries in the Sahel

Civil Society Security Narratives in Burkina Faso and Niger

Bibliographic Data

ID3948574
AuthorsAdam Sandor (0000-0002-8429-5920, University of Bayreuth, corresponding author), Laura Berlingozzi (0009-0002-7255-6289, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna)
Year2025
Volume31
Issue4
Pages1-29
Publication date2025-05-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2025.2498381
OpenAlexW4410238190
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited50

Recent shifts in the international security partnerships of several Sahelian countries have become a matter of fierce public debate. This article analyzes the link between geopolitical imaginaries, military-led governments, and civil society formations in Burkina Faso and Niger. It aims to explore how civil society actors in Burkina Faso and Niger co-construct different geopolitical imaginaries about security and foreign policy in the Sahel. Drawing on several rounds of fieldwork in both countries, the article argues that civil society actors play a pivotal role in shaping these imaginaries. In Burkina Faso, military transitional authorities galvanise (and are galvanised by) Pan-Africanist-inspired civil society organisations that support martial discourses of radical sovereignty and the attainment of modern territorial sovereign control beyond the supposed interference of neocolonial forces. In Niger, by contrast, depending on the regime in power, civil society actors have had to navigate government repression for their sovereigntist advocacy stances, moving then towards ardent support of their post-coup government’s increasingly anti-Western actor involvement over the country’s security affairs. The article shows that civil society actors are neither challengers of authoritarian governmental practice, nor simple pawns in support of military-led governments, but instead act as geopolitical practitioners that work to consolidate a reorientation of their governments’ foreign policy strategies to challenge what they view as continued neocolonial dominance of the contemporary world order and their states’ marginalisation therein

Civil society · Environmental security · Geopolitics · Grassroots · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Law · Migration, Identity, and Health

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