The Sahel's real dependency is four coastal ports

Coverage of the Sahel runs through capitals — Bamako, Ouagadougou, Niamey. The more useful map is of the four Gulf of Guinea ports those capitals depend on.

The corridors

Mali’s imports have historically moved through Abidjan, with Dakar as the alternative. Burkina Faso runs through Abidjan, Tema and Lomé. Niger runs mainly through Cotonou, with Lomé as the fallback.

Each is a road corridor of 1,000 to 1,500 kilometres carrying fuel, fertiliser, construction materials and a large share of food. There is no maritime alternative and rail is largely non-functional on most routes.

Why the corridor is the leverage

When a border closes it is not symbolic. A landlocked state with one primary corridor and one degraded alternative has weeks of buffer, not months, and fuel price moves first.

This is why corridor shifts deserve more attention than communiqués. Rerouting from Cotonou to Lomé is a real change in dependency and takes months to arrange — new hauliers, new customs relationships, new warehousing. When it happens it signals a durable alignment.

What to watch

Truck queue lengths at the main crossings, published fuel prices inland, and port throughput figures. All three move before the political coverage does.

Reported by Reuters and Al Jazeera; analysis ours.