Despite the Unesco peace prize awarded to French President François Hollande for his country’s intervention in Mali and the prospect of early elections in the west African country, all is not well in the Sahara, and there is serious doubt that the country will be ready for national polls by the end of July.
There has also been heavy criticism by human rights groups of the peace award, previous recipients of which include Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Ireland’s Mary Robinson.
Until the recent crisis and the French intervention in Mali, the country was little known to many in Europe and across the world. Indeed, the city of Timbuktu has long been a synonym for the middle of nowhere.
A rare high point in Europe’s past interest in Mali and the Sahara was when Mark Thatcher, the playboy son of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, went missing during an infamous Paris–Dakar motor rally and was lost for several days in the desert.
But since the recent crisis in Mali, the country has risen to the top of the political agenda, and questions are being asked as to whether the French intervention is about promoting peace and democracy, or protecting natural resources in the best economic interest of France.
My first contact with Mali was when our eldest son Joseph was born, and we decided to celebrate his birth by planting trees near Timbuktu as part of a project to try and halt the encroaching desert. But I am not sure we have been entirely successful.
Since then, I was briefly in Mali, and visited Bamaco and Timbuktu, as a member of the European Parliament and vice chair the Joint EU/ACP Parliamentary Assembly which links EU countries with those of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
The decision to commit Irish development aid to the value of an extra €2.5m, announced by the Minister of State for Trade and Development Joe Costello, in support of the people of war-torn Mali is a significant act of leadership by the Irish presidency of the European Union. This is in addition to Ireland’s allocation of €1.8m already provided in 2013 by Irish Aid in support of the World Food Programme to prevent and treat malnutrition in children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers.
Then there was the Brussels donor conference to which Ireland delivered a pledge of €4bn to fund the Malian government’s plan for a “total relaunch of the country”. But the urgent food crisis across the whole of the Sahel region has attracted less than half the funding required to prevent a humanitarian disaster.
The new food crisis in the Sahel is due to a combination of drought, high food prices and chronic poverty that affects millions across the region, which comprises Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania. The Sahel is where the desert meets the savannah and is a region of semi arid grassland and desert along the edge of the Sahara. More than 11 million people are still facing hunger across this region, and urgent international aid is needed.
The Sahel has been the home of some of Africa’s most influential civilisations for centuries, and in modern times Mali has a very special place in African music. But despite the romance and adventure associated with the desert, life is tough and the future of the traditional nomadic life in the desert is under threat.
For too long the desert has been exploited for its mineral resources and the combination of weak government, organised crime and smuggling, and both the Tuareg and Islamic insurgences in the north of the country, has led to the crisis and the French intervention.
The announcement by the Minister Costello of extra Irish Aid funding for the people of Mali deserves the wholehearted support of the people of Ireland and Europe.
Michael McGowan is a former MEP and president of the development committee of the European Parliament.
