The five heads of state of the G5 Sahel countries - Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger - gathered at their 5th summit on 5 February in Ouagadougou, following a series of expert and ministerial meetings. The rotating presidency was officially transferred from Niger to Burkina Faso for a one-year mandate. Despite efforts to quickly scale-up the joint military force’s operations, the situation in the Sahel remains highly unstable.What did this summit achieve? Read on

This OECD report looks at ways to improve the resilience of systems to deal with the unexpected arrival of large inflows of refugees and other vulnerable migrants. For European countries as a whole, the impact of the refugee inflow is estimated to be small. The report tackles issues of anticipation, monitoring and reacting. It recommends that countries increase their co-operation and share information to enable them to deal more effectively and quickly with inflows of humanitarian migrants. Read on

This analysis from Matthieu Pellerin at the French research institute IFRI focuses on security issues along the Niger-Libya border. Since 2011, security initiatives have been mostly externally driven, even as they responded to the government of Niger’s demands to secure its borders against jihadist attacks. Never before has the Sahel region been so highly militarised. However, the heavy presence of external security forces may be negatively affecting the interests of local communities. Most efforts are solely focused on border control without any long-term vision about how to help this fragile area develop and become more stable. Read on

Organised on the side-lines of the 34th RPCA annual meeting, the ECOWAS-UEMOA-CILSS event marked the official launch of the project for “improving the regional governance of resilience, food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture in West Africa” (PAGR-SANAD). The project aims to build capacity within regional and national institutions to strengthen the regional governance of FNS and agricultural policies, build resilience in West Africa, and work toward achieving zero hunger by 2025. Read on