All the comments are right but the fundamental root before Islamism, before secret agencies shenanigans, is the absolute poverty of the region.
It is literally the poorest region of the world. 65% literacy rate. People there will follow the first man who promise them with better living conditions. It can be a dictator, a warlord, a religious zealot, a fucking pastafarist prophet, it doesn't matter. People really are desperate like this.
I worked as an analyst for Sub-Saharan countries for a few years, so take it as you will. The big issues I identified were 1) SSA’s don’t really have a belief that government will work for them. In the West, governance supersedes tribe and ethnic groups, meaning you can expect a fair shake. That doesn’t happen in SSA. Whatever group is in power will self-deal. 2) There is no “Castle Doctrine” and this is important. In Mozambique, less than 1,000 ISIS fighters are keeping 80,000 Mozambicans internally displaced, because no one will stand and fight for their village.
If I could show two movies to SSAs, they would be Seven Samurai and Twelve Angry Men.
Yes they are poor. But why? Why does the poverty exist, and why have other regions been able to develop out of it while the issues persist here? Poverty is transient - when the conditions that create it disappear so will it.
Mainly total lack of effective governance. Tribal politics are prevalent. There is no Malian identity or Malian national interest that can overcome the tribal culture.
Of course colonialist heritage is partly to blame but it is less and less relevant over the years. Moreover Mali has never been the main focus of french colonialism.
Usually this lady makes some good points or turns up some ok research but I feel like quite a bit of this was just baiting her audiences lowest impulses in a very 'silicon valley history blog' way until the end when she rejects her own premise and concludes it's all about types of land and lack of grain surpluses in history. Why not just have a proper discussion?
Firstly, the background for this is the patchy growth in the decades of IMF 'structural adjustment' from the 80s to the 00s many African states didn't grow at economically all, then there was a period of growth that ended with the 2008 financial crisis. This is the most important factor in African weak states imo, they were literally made weak in exchange for loans and if they'd continued along something like their post-colonial state formation trajectory they wouldn't have those problems.
The historical Sahelian states were often (though not always) horse nobles states that engaged in slave raiding, but they were also big into gold mining/panning etc, linked to the Saharian trade routes, and the Fulani dominated states like the Sokoto Caliphate were much later. But, the states which were precursors to what is now Christian dominated Africa were usually smaller and weaker than those and also often engaged in slave raiding so idk what she went to all that trouble for.
Another explanation for the difference seems to be the Muslim/Saharan trade went into decline and the coastal/southern states links to the ascendant European/North American economies meant that southern polities were in a better position within them when the Europeans take over those polities mostly in the 1800s. The colonial states (and therefore their successors) were mostly build on top of southern populations and their elites which meant decades of uneven development, then discrimination when the states became independent and went through their rapid period of growth in the import substitution period after that.
More broadly I think that a decent part of the modern growth of conservative Sunni Islam in the Sahel is fairly recent, she mentions this later on and doesn't say that it has to do with Saudi/Gulf funding of salafist and/or wahabist preachers that really gets going in the 80s. The recent upsurge of violence also seems to be linked first to the war on terror and (private) Gulf funding for jihadi groups and public US funding for militaries during it. Now the remnants of those religious schools, headers and traders who turned into religiously inspired brigands are plugging into a new trans Saharan trade routes particularly of artisanal gold mining operations with links to various states (including Gulf ones again) and there is a spiral where more money attracts more recruits and weapons etc.
Many other countries that accepted IMF loans and did "structural adjustments" did see high growth. I think a lot of this boils down to a lot of these states being at a different lower level of development before this all started. The slave trade completely messed up Africa, but in ways that are less direct than what people realize. When the Portuguese set up shop in Africa, and the slave trade started states that could provide slaves succeeded often at the expense of other states. The slave trading states got money and arms from European powers and thus had more power and motivation to expand.
These slave trading states were very dependent on slavery and dominated the region. There was very little actual development of a diversified economy or lasting institution and people not involved directly with the slave trade were subsistence farmers and pastoralists that had to often hide themselves from the state authority because they were targets of slave raiders.
When the slave trade disappeared it created incredibly weak states and allowed for European colonialism to take hold. I think all of this sets up a rather unique distrust of centralized authority. If the state invests in a roadway or public transportation the people in the area it might serve might just up and move away because the road and infrastructure might be seen as a way for the government to come in and extract resources from the population as there never really were any trusted institutions in that area.
This inherent distrust creates alliegences to non state authority like religious and tribal authority. Institutions like liberal democracy can't really take hold and any attempt to implement something like this just ends up being co-opted by religious/tribal groups that seek to use the government to enrich themselves and a relatively small group of people around them rather than actually build trusted institutions.
So IMF stipulations are especially pointless in this environment because there isn't actually a real state amongst these countries to begin with. Therefore it makes logical sense for a dictator to establish some semblance of a state and use violence to unify and force the population to accept state authority. This is why ideologies like Communism and Islamic states, military dictatorships etc become attractive even if completely diametrically opposed. There is also a lot of fear that if a state is established various ethno-religious identities will be genocided or oppressed thus creating a hot bed of conflict.
Because Europe and the US bombed Libya into a failed state, leading to the islamist militias who fight for control of Libya extending their reach into the Sahel, recruiting marginalized peul people in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Since these states are very weak and corrupt, they lacked the capacity to effectively fight these islamist forces. Initiatially, they asked the Europeans for help, but when they also proved ineffective, they turned to the Russian, who went on to commit severe atrocities but failed to solve the problem.
Also earliest states makes them more of a target, not less.
Terrorism is organized crime, lest we forget. Imo it makes perfect sense that organized crime seeks to infiltrate already existing, but fragile states. It's an odd question tbh. Fragmented states are not going to be epicenters of anything. Well, because they're fragmented.
Where else is anyone recruiting and plundering if not population centers? 🥴
While still falling victim to the Russian alternative like @Jaded-Ad960 mentioned. Ibrahim Traoré wants to be a hopeful socialist leader like Thomas Sankara, but as long as he depends on a nation like Russia to succeed he’s still falling trap to an outside fascist force. Someone like Russia will only continue to pray on a nation like that.
Let's not act like gadaffi also never supported terrorist all through out Africa.
Gadaffi also colonized Northern Chad for resources and supported Arab supremacists in Sudan for decades.
He supported the ruf terrorist in Sierra Leone a group that would cut off random civilians hands off.
Most developed nations in the world have already entered periods of demographic decline (or even collapse). The only continent with rapid and widespread population growth is Africa. Places like Nigeria are predicted to have more people than China by 2100.
Its actually Algeria.
I find it funny how people here blame the west when mali has been blaming Algeria for the last few years for there support of azawad sepertist.
Submission statement: Sub-Saharan Africa’s earliest states, located in the Sahelian-Sudanic belt, were built on trade networks exchanging salt, gold, and slaves for warhorses. This focus on man-hunting over territorial control led to fragile states with weak institutions and a lack of national cohesion. The legacy of these early states, coupled with the region’s embrace of Islam, has contributed to persistent poverty, political instability, and jihadist insurgencies in the area.
Fundamentalist Islam. Militant radicals largely funded with Arab and Iranian oil money, attempting to subjugate impoverished indigenous populations and keep them living in the thirteenth century. Of course, the Mamdani crowd will continue to blame the west and ignore the genocidal atrocities in this region committed in the name of Islam.
NoName-Cheval03 | 15 hours ago
All the comments are right but the fundamental root before Islamism, before secret agencies shenanigans, is the absolute poverty of the region.
It is literally the poorest region of the world. 65% literacy rate. People there will follow the first man who promise them with better living conditions. It can be a dictator, a warlord, a religious zealot, a fucking pastafarist prophet, it doesn't matter. People really are desperate like this.
Confused_by_La_Vida | 12 hours ago
Are they more poor than in 1926, 1826, 826?
Netherese_Nomad | 11 hours ago
Less money buys more RPGS and AKs. Terrorism is cheap because of modern tech.
Confused_by_La_Vida | 11 hours ago
So…social cohesion has always been a problem?
Netherese_Nomad | 10 hours ago
I worked as an analyst for Sub-Saharan countries for a few years, so take it as you will. The big issues I identified were 1) SSA’s don’t really have a belief that government will work for them. In the West, governance supersedes tribe and ethnic groups, meaning you can expect a fair shake. That doesn’t happen in SSA. Whatever group is in power will self-deal. 2) There is no “Castle Doctrine” and this is important. In Mozambique, less than 1,000 ISIS fighters are keeping 80,000 Mozambicans internally displaced, because no one will stand and fight for their village.
If I could show two movies to SSAs, they would be Seven Samurai and Twelve Angry Men.
Confused_by_La_Vida | 10 hours ago
Got it.
AdHeavy2829 | 8 hours ago
Rapid environmental deterioration cause by global warming caused by western overconsumption doesn’t help matter either.
yxhuvud | 4 hours ago
Yes they are poor. But why? Why does the poverty exist, and why have other regions been able to develop out of it while the issues persist here? Poverty is transient - when the conditions that create it disappear so will it.
NoName-Cheval03 | 4 hours ago
Mainly total lack of effective governance. Tribal politics are prevalent. There is no Malian identity or Malian national interest that can overcome the tribal culture.
Of course colonialist heritage is partly to blame but it is less and less relevant over the years. Moreover Mali has never been the main focus of french colonialism.
batmans_stuntcock | 15 hours ago
Usually this lady makes some good points or turns up some ok research but I feel like quite a bit of this was just baiting her audiences lowest impulses in a very 'silicon valley history blog' way until the end when she rejects her own premise and concludes it's all about types of land and lack of grain surpluses in history. Why not just have a proper discussion?
Firstly, the background for this is the patchy growth in the decades of IMF 'structural adjustment' from the 80s to the 00s many African states didn't grow at economically all, then there was a period of growth that ended with the 2008 financial crisis. This is the most important factor in African weak states imo, they were literally made weak in exchange for loans and if they'd continued along something like their post-colonial state formation trajectory they wouldn't have those problems.
The historical Sahelian states were often (though not always) horse nobles states that engaged in slave raiding, but they were also big into gold mining/panning etc, linked to the Saharian trade routes, and the Fulani dominated states like the Sokoto Caliphate were much later. But, the states which were precursors to what is now Christian dominated Africa were usually smaller and weaker than those and also often engaged in slave raiding so idk what she went to all that trouble for.
Another explanation for the difference seems to be the Muslim/Saharan trade went into decline and the coastal/southern states links to the ascendant European/North American economies meant that southern polities were in a better position within them when the Europeans take over those polities mostly in the 1800s. The colonial states (and therefore their successors) were mostly build on top of southern populations and their elites which meant decades of uneven development, then discrimination when the states became independent and went through their rapid period of growth in the import substitution period after that.
More broadly I think that a decent part of the modern growth of conservative Sunni Islam in the Sahel is fairly recent, she mentions this later on and doesn't say that it has to do with Saudi/Gulf funding of salafist and/or wahabist preachers that really gets going in the 80s. The recent upsurge of violence also seems to be linked first to the war on terror and (private) Gulf funding for jihadi groups and public US funding for militaries during it. Now the remnants of those religious schools, headers and traders who turned into religiously inspired brigands are plugging into a new trans Saharan trade routes particularly of artisanal gold mining operations with links to various states (including Gulf ones again) and there is a spiral where more money attracts more recruits and weapons etc.
Edit: context.
thebigmanhastherock | 10 hours ago
Many other countries that accepted IMF loans and did "structural adjustments" did see high growth. I think a lot of this boils down to a lot of these states being at a different lower level of development before this all started. The slave trade completely messed up Africa, but in ways that are less direct than what people realize. When the Portuguese set up shop in Africa, and the slave trade started states that could provide slaves succeeded often at the expense of other states. The slave trading states got money and arms from European powers and thus had more power and motivation to expand.
These slave trading states were very dependent on slavery and dominated the region. There was very little actual development of a diversified economy or lasting institution and people not involved directly with the slave trade were subsistence farmers and pastoralists that had to often hide themselves from the state authority because they were targets of slave raiders.
When the slave trade disappeared it created incredibly weak states and allowed for European colonialism to take hold. I think all of this sets up a rather unique distrust of centralized authority. If the state invests in a roadway or public transportation the people in the area it might serve might just up and move away because the road and infrastructure might be seen as a way for the government to come in and extract resources from the population as there never really were any trusted institutions in that area.
This inherent distrust creates alliegences to non state authority like religious and tribal authority. Institutions like liberal democracy can't really take hold and any attempt to implement something like this just ends up being co-opted by religious/tribal groups that seek to use the government to enrich themselves and a relatively small group of people around them rather than actually build trusted institutions.
So IMF stipulations are especially pointless in this environment because there isn't actually a real state amongst these countries to begin with. Therefore it makes logical sense for a dictator to establish some semblance of a state and use violence to unify and force the population to accept state authority. This is why ideologies like Communism and Islamic states, military dictatorships etc become attractive even if completely diametrically opposed. There is also a lot of fear that if a state is established various ethno-religious identities will be genocided or oppressed thus creating a hot bed of conflict.
Jaded-Ad-960 | 16 hours ago
Because Europe and the US bombed Libya into a failed state, leading to the islamist militias who fight for control of Libya extending their reach into the Sahel, recruiting marginalized peul people in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Since these states are very weak and corrupt, they lacked the capacity to effectively fight these islamist forces. Initiatially, they asked the Europeans for help, but when they also proved ineffective, they turned to the Russian, who went on to commit severe atrocities but failed to solve the problem.
HugeDouche | 16 hours ago
Also earliest states makes them more of a target, not less.
Terrorism is organized crime, lest we forget. Imo it makes perfect sense that organized crime seeks to infiltrate already existing, but fragile states. It's an odd question tbh. Fragmented states are not going to be epicenters of anything. Well, because they're fragmented.
Where else is anyone recruiting and plundering if not population centers? 🥴
LowerEntropy | 16 hours ago
Do you have any good news?
phaedrus910 | 14 hours ago
Burkina Faso is building resistance to western imperialism and Jihadists
nothing_in_dimona | 14 hours ago
Oh
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/03/people-burkina-faso-should-forget-about-democracy-military-ruler-ibrahim-traore
phaedrus910 | 11 hours ago
“Democracy, we kill children. Democracy, we drop bombs, we kill women, we destroy hospitals, we kill civilian population. Is that democracy?”
CineCane13 | 14 hours ago
While still falling victim to the Russian alternative like @Jaded-Ad960 mentioned. Ibrahim Traoré wants to be a hopeful socialist leader like Thomas Sankara, but as long as he depends on a nation like Russia to succeed he’s still falling trap to an outside fascist force. Someone like Russia will only continue to pray on a nation like that.
phaedrus910 | 12 hours ago
What alternative do you suggest they use.
Reasonable_Fold6492 | 13 hours ago
Let's not act like gadaffi also never supported terrorist all through out Africa. Gadaffi also colonized Northern Chad for resources and supported Arab supremacists in Sudan for decades. He supported the ruf terrorist in Sierra Leone a group that would cut off random civilians hands off.
Loggerdon | 12 hours ago
Most developed nations in the world have already entered periods of demographic decline (or even collapse). The only continent with rapid and widespread population growth is Africa. Places like Nigeria are predicted to have more people than China by 2100.
Newzachary | 17 hours ago
Because CIA.
(My top level comment is too short, so I added this bs)
Reasonable_Fold6492 | 13 hours ago
Its actually Algeria. I find it funny how people here blame the west when mali has been blaming Algeria for the last few years for there support of azawad sepertist.
Global_Cookie_1545 | 16 hours ago
what role does colonial history play in this situation?
[OP] UnscheduledCalendar | 18 hours ago
Submission statement: Sub-Saharan Africa’s earliest states, located in the Sahelian-Sudanic belt, were built on trade networks exchanging salt, gold, and slaves for warhorses. This focus on man-hunting over territorial control led to fragile states with weak institutions and a lack of national cohesion. The legacy of these early states, coupled with the region’s embrace of Islam, has contributed to persistent poverty, political instability, and jihadist insurgencies in the area.
NotSteveJobs-Job | 15 hours ago
That’s not how you spell historical U.S. and European policies.
Loyal_Dragon_69 | 12 hours ago
No shit.
Traditional_Bar_1481 | 16 hours ago
Fundamentalist Islam. Militant radicals largely funded with Arab and Iranian oil money, attempting to subjugate impoverished indigenous populations and keep them living in the thirteenth century. Of course, the Mamdani crowd will continue to blame the west and ignore the genocidal atrocities in this region committed in the name of Islam.
Loyal_Dragon_69 | 12 hours ago
Unfortunately true.