Sovereignty, Security, and Regional Fragmentation: Assessing the Political and Economic Implications for ECOWAS

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is under strain following military coups in three member states in the Sahel—Mali (2020 and 2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023) that resulted in their joint exit from ECOWAS (Sahexit), declared in January 2024 and finalized in January 2025. However, Guinea’s military regime maintained its membership and continued engaging the organization. This study examines ECOWAS’ responses to the coups and the political and economic implications of Sahexit. Using a qualitative comparative case study approach and process tracing within the five country cases of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, and Togo, we use official ECOWAS communications and policy documents as well as on economic data, including from the IMF and UNECA, and other secondary sources. The study is guided by the four interconnected dimensions of economic-developmental, security-strategic, political-normative, and external influence within the New Regionalism Approach and theories of regional disintegration. The study finds that ECOWAS is in a legitimacy crisis because of weak institutional response, economic disruption, and poor security cooperation. The study further finds that the withdrawal of the three Sahel countries has resulted in a loss of 26.42% of intraregional trade, 7.42% of regional GDP and 16.75% of the ECOWAS population, three countries that are also among the top performers on the ECOWAS single-currency convergence criteria. ECOWAS’s challenges reflect a deeper set of contradictions between the norms of sovereignty on the one hand and supranational authority on the other, contradictions that are particularly apparent in African regionalism.