Nicolas Haque

“Bienvenue a Bamako!” The fixer, the minder and the men linked to the Malian government were waiting for us at the airport in Bamako. Polite, smiling – and watchful. It was late December, and we had just taken an Air Burkina flight from Dakar, Senegal across the Sahel, where a storm of political upheaval and armed violence has unsettled the region in recent years. Mali sits at the centre of a reckoning.

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Dakar, Senegal – “Finally, we can breathe,” the cashier at the American Food Store supermarket in Dakar said while swiping a pot of Greek yoghurt through checkout. It was three days after Senegal’s contested March 24 presidential election – the day provisional results were announced – and there was a sense that something had turned: a new vigour for democracy brought about by the election of opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye.