Ecowas: What changes as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger leave the West African bloc?

According to the departing countries, they will now experience greater sovereignty and also independence from a force that has a foreign agenda.

But analysts say Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso may struggle outside the bloc – these are poor and landlocked countries whose economies depend on their West African neighbours.

While Ecowas works out the terms of its future relationship with the three countries, it says it will continue to recognise all passports and identity cards bearing the Ecowas logo held by citizens from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

The countries will also remain in the bloc’s free-trade scheme.

Similarly, AES chairman, Mali’s military ruler Assimi Goïta, said last January that the right of Ecowas citizens to “enter, circulate, reside, establish and leave the territory” of the new bloc would be maintained.

Ilyasu Gadu, an international affairs expert and media consultant based in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, told the BBC: “The three junta leaders have taken steps to say: ‘Yes, we are pulling out of Ecowas but we want to maintain our relationships. We will not close our borders’ because they must have realised that if they do that, they would have shot themselves in the foot.”

West Africa observers are also concerned the withdrawal will worsen security in the region. The Sahel – the semi-arid region just south of the Sahara Desert that includes the three departing countries – is wracked with jihadist insurgencies and now accounts for “almost half of all deaths from terrorism globally”, a senior UN official said in April, external.

Ecowas was supporting Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in their fight against the jihadists, but this help may now be rescinded, observers fear.

Although the juntas now receive weapons and mercenaries from Russia, the militants continue to inflict heavy casualties on both civilians and the armed forces.