Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso are taking a major step toward financial autonomy with the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) Investment Bank project. According to Magaye Gaye, an international economist and former BOAD executive, this initiative aims to "finance according to its own priorities and negotiate as equals with external partners," in a context where constraints related to the CFA franc limit the room for maneuver of the region's countries.

On the concrete benefits for the three states, he explains: "The creation of a development bank is explained firstly by economic and monetary reasons, then political and strategic ones. The needs in infrastructure, energy, agriculture and industrialization are massive and require a sovereign financing tool."

To succeed, the new institution will have to overcome several challenges. "Even with the support of their public opinion, these regimes are exposed to internal or external destabilization attempts aimed at preventing the consolidation of a sovereign financial tool," he said, adding that "the response to these obstacles is strategic: securing financial alliances outside of channels likely to block them, demonstrating without delay the quality of the first operations, and establishing governance safeguards that reassure partners and markets."

The initial capital of 500 billion CFA francs is deliberately modest. Magaye Gaye emphasizes: "The interest lies elsewhere: to serve as leverage to attract other resources, whether through external partners such as the BRICS, the Gulf countries, China, or Russia, or through national commercial banks and regional and international bond issues."

Finally, on the issue of monetary sovereignty, he recalls that "four countries, the three from the AES and Senegal, have clearly stated the need to consider an autonomous currency, because the CFA franc limits export strategies and regional economic integration. In the short term, they mainly want to equip themselves with their own financing tools, but the path logically leads towards an AES central bank and, ultimately, an autonomous currency."