Reviving the Community of Sahel-Saharan States: Can Security Challenges Rebuild Regional Cooperation?

Rapidly evolving security dynamics across the Sahel and Sahara are forcing regional states to reconsider cooperation mechanisms whose effectiveness has declined over the past decade. The expansion of terrorist groups, transnational organized crime and smuggling networks, irregular migration, fragile borders, and vast territories with limited state control have created challenges that individual countries are increasingly unable to address alone.

Against this backdrop, efforts by Egypt, Libya, and Chad to revive the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, commonly known as CEN-SAD, carry significance beyond simply restarting the activities of a largely dormant regional organization. They reflect an attempt to rebuild a framework for cooperation between North Africa and the Sahel at a time when the latter is undergoing profound political and security transformations.

A trilateral meeting between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, his Chadian counterpart Ahmad Kougri, and Taher Al-Baour, who is responsible for foreign affairs in Libya’s interim Government of National Unity, on the sidelines of the Alamein-Africa Forum brought the issue of revitalizing CEN-SAD back onto the regional agenda.

The central question, however, is not merely whether another ministerial meeting or summit can be convened. It is whether current regional conditions can give CEN-SAD a new function fundamentally different from the role envisioned for it nearly three decades ago.

Security Is Reshaping CEN-SAD’s Priorities

CEN-SAD was established in Tripoli in 1998 in a regional environment fundamentally different from today’s. Its original ambitions centered largely on expanding economic cooperation and integration among member states as part of a broader African vision promoted by Libya under Muammar Gaddafi.

The environment in which the organization must operate today has changed dramatically.

The Sahel has become one of Africa’s most unstable security zones, affected by the spread of armed groups, human trafficking, weapons and narcotics smuggling networks, and the growing intersection between organized crime, local conflicts, and insurgencies.

Any attempt to revive CEN-SAD, therefore, may not begin primarily with the economic integration that formed part of its original philosophy. Instead, its renewed relevance may depend on its ability to serve as a broader regional security mechanism.

The issues discussed by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Libya, and Chad illustrate this shift clearly. Counterterrorism, transnational organized crime, irregular migration, and security capacity-building for member states were placed at the center of discussions about the organization’s future.

This may represent one of the most important opportunities for CEN-SAD’s revival: transforming it from a broad political and economic cooperation framework into a practical platform for coordinating security policies between North Africa and the Sahel.

Why the Region Needs a Cross-Border Framework

The fundamental challenge lies in the transnational nature of the threats confronting the Sahel and Sahara.

Political borders stretch across vast desert territories that are extremely difficult to secure comprehensively, while smuggling networks and armed organizations often operate across those borders as though they constituted a single operational space.

Weapons, fighters, migrant-smuggling networks, and criminal organizations can move from one country to another with a speed that limits the effectiveness of purely national responses.

Addressing these threats therefore requires levels of intelligence sharing, border coordination, capacity-building, and joint training that cannot be achieved entirely through bilateral relations.

This is where CEN-SAD could regain strategic relevance.

Its geographical reach provides a distinctive advantage. The organization brings together states from North, West, Central, and East Africa and covers a substantial part of the geographical belt through which migration routes, smuggling networks, and armed groups operate.

If CEN-SAD can establish permanent mechanisms for intelligence exchange, border-security coordination, and action against criminal networks, its geographical scale could shift from being an institutional burden to becoming a strategic asset.

Egypt, Libya, and Chad: A Geographic Triangle of Regional Security

Coordination among Egypt, Libya, and Chad carries particular significance because of the geographical position of the three countries.

Libya serves as a bridge between North Africa and the Sahel, while Chad occupies a central position within the Sahelian belt. Egypt shares a direct border with Libya and has broader security interests tied to the stability of its western neighborhood and its connections with the African interior.

The security of the three states is therefore difficult to separate.

Any deterioration in the Sahel can generate consequences farther north through Libya, while continued fragility in certain border regions can provide favorable conditions for smuggling and organized criminal networks.

Trilateral cooperation is therefore about more than reviving a regional organization. It represents an attempt to construct a corridor of coordination stretching from the Mediterranean southward into the African interior.

This triangle could become one of the main engines behind CEN-SAD’s revival if the three countries succeed in translating political understandings into sustainable institutional arrangements.

CEN-SAD’s Return to Libya and Its Significance

The resumption of CEN-SAD activities in Libya carries both political and symbolic significance.

The organization was established in Tripoli in 1998 at Libya’s initiative, and for years the country served as a central hub for its activities. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in 2011 and the political and security instability that followed resulted in the relocation of the organization’s General Secretariat to N’Djamena and a decline in Libya’s role within the institution.

The return of CEN-SAD meetings to Tripoli therefore represents an attempt to reconnect the organization with its institutional roots. It also reflects Libya’s efforts to recover part of its African diplomatic role.

Egypt, Libya, and Chad have agreed to work toward convening the twenty-second session of CEN-SAD’s Executive Council in Tripoli, paving the way for a summit of heads of state and government in N’Djamena.

If implemented, moving from consultative meetings toward restoring institutional structures could constitute an initial step toward rebuilding the organization’s effectiveness.

A return to Tripoli alone, however, will not be sufficient. CEN-SAD’s success will depend on whether it can move beyond the political legacy of its founding era and transform itself into an institution capable of responding to contemporary challenges.

From a Political Project to a Functional Necessity

In its early years, CEN-SAD was associated with broad African political ambitions promoted by Gaddafi, at times linked to his vision of a “United States of Africa.”

The current African political environment makes reproducing such a vision unrealistic.

The more significant opportunity for CEN-SAD today lies in moving away from grand political projects toward clearly defined practical functions.

Rather than attempting to build a broad organization with ambitious integration goals, member states could concentrate on a limited number of areas where they share immediate interests: border security, counterterrorism, organized crime, irregular migration, cross-border infrastructure, and trade facilitation.

This shift from political ambition to practical functionality may be essential to the organization’s survival.

Regional institutions do not regain relevance simply by holding summits. They become relevant when they provide member states with tools and capabilities that are difficult to obtain through unilateral action.

The Trilateral Road: Where Security Meets Development

The strategic road project connecting Egypt, Libya, and Chad offers another example of how security and development can intersect.

The project, which aims to establish a land corridor linking the three countries and extending toward the Red Sea, carries significance beyond commerce. It can also be understood as part of a broader effort to reshape connectivity between North Africa and the African interior.

Cross-border road and trade networks can create economic alternatives for communities in regions where informal economic activities or smuggling networks may otherwise play significant roles. Improved connectivity can also help integrate peripheral border regions more closely into national economies.

Infrastructure itself, however, requires a stable security environment.

This illustrates the reciprocal relationship between security and development. Economic integration cannot advance without secure borders and trade routes, while long-term stability is difficult to achieve through security measures alone in the absence of economic opportunities and development.

If its priorities are redesigned, CEN-SAD could provide a framework in which these two tracks are addressed together rather than as separate policy areas.

The Challenges of Revival

Despite the growing need for cooperation, efforts to reactivate CEN-SAD face several obstacles.

The first is the large number of member states and the diversity of their political, economic, and security priorities. The challenges facing North African states are not necessarily identical to those confronting countries in West Africa or the Horn of Africa.

A second challenge is the multiplicity of regional organizations operating across the continent. CEN-SAD overlaps with other African and subregional frameworks, making it essential to identify the specific functions it can perform without merely duplicating existing institutions.

A third challenge concerns institutional capacity and financing. Reactivating the General Secretariat and convening summits will achieve little without adequate resources, implementation mechanisms, and systems for monitoring decisions.

Political transformations across the Sahel have also produced divergent relationships with international powers and differing approaches to regional security. Building broad consensus among member states may consequently prove increasingly complicated.

Can a New CEN-SAD Emerge from the Old Institution?

The paradox may be that the crisis that contributed to CEN-SAD’s decline over the past decade is now providing the organization with an opportunity for renewal.

The region CEN-SAD was created to integrate has become more interconnected in security terms than ever before. Crises no longer remain confined within national borders; they move across them.

The central question, therefore, is no longer whether Sahel-Saharan states need cooperation, but what kind of cooperation they require.

If revival efforts are limited to convening meetings and restoring old institutional structures, CEN-SAD may remain an organization with limited influence. But if its role is redefined around clear priorities—particularly border security, intelligence sharing, counterterrorism, organized crime, irregular migration, and the integration of these efforts with development and infrastructure projects—the organization could acquire a new strategic function.

The objective would then not be to restore CEN-SAD exactly as it existed at the end of the 1990s, but to build a new version capable of responding to a fundamentally different regional environment.

The real test is therefore not whether member states can bring the institution back to life, but whether they can transform it from a legacy regional organization into an effective instrument for confronting some of the most serious security and development challenges facing the Sahel and Sahara in the years ahead.