German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is set to visit Senegal and the Ivory Coast next week for talks with leaders of West Africa’s few remaining democracies.
The two countries are vital for the region’s stability and essential economic partners for Germany, a Foreign Office spokesman said in Berlin on Friday.
Migration and renewable energies are likely to be two topics under discussion, with German business representatives accompanying Baerbock on her visit.
Baerbock is scheduled to meet her Senegalese counterpart Yassine Fall alongside newly elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in Dakar on Monday.
Talks with Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and Foreign Minister Kacou Houadja Leon Adom are due to follow in the country’s administrative capital Abidjan on Tuesday.
Baerbock’s visit comes amid a wave of instability in the Sahel region, which some observers have termed the African Coup Belt, following military uprisings in Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon since 2020.
While many of the new military governments have turned away from relations with the European Union, withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and canvassed support from Russian forces, the two coastal have maintained their relations with the West.
A key item on the agenda will be migration, with talks on legal routes to Europe and deportation. Regional issues in the Sahel could “quickly spill over to us, for example in the form of irregular migration or organized crime,” the spokesman said.
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