Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita held a meeting in New York with his counterparts from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Chad to follow up on the implementation of King Mohammed VI’s initiative to enable Sahel countries to have access to the Atlantic Ocean.
This meeting, held on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, brought together Foreign Ministers Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré of Burkina Faso, Abdoulaye Diop of Mali, Bakary Yaou Sangaré of Niger, and Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul of Chad, who emphasized the significance of the historic audience granted by the King to the Foreign Ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States on April 28, 2025.
This Royal audience offered an opportunity for the African ministers to reaffirm their countries’ full support for the Royal Initiative and their commitment to accelerating its implementation.
King Mohammed VI announced this international initiative to facilitate access for the Sahel countries to the Atlantic Ocean in a speech he delivered on November 6, 2023, marking the 48th anniversary of the Green March.
The African ministers praised the broad regional, continental, and international support for the Royal Initiative, and expressed their willingness to begin the gradual implementation of the proposed projects under this Initiative, building on the work carried out by Moroccan, Burkinabè, Malian, and Chadian task forces.
In this regard, national task forces will shortly hold technical meetings aimed at implementing the proposed projects.
The meeting reflected a shared political will to jointly establish, with the Sahel countries, an integrated space for co-development, shared prosperity, and regional influence in the service of local populations.
During the meeting, the ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States presented the institutional and operational progress of the Alliance, which was founded as a coordination framework among its three member states (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger).
New York also hosted the 6th meeting of Foreign ministers of the member states of the Royal Initiative on the Atlantic African States Process (AASP).
The meeting followed the “Africa for the Ocean” Summit, held at the initiative of King Mohammed VI in Nice in June, during the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC-3).
It marks a major milestone in strengthening the Royal Initiative, which aims to deepen cooperation and integration among African states bordering the Atlantic. The meeting also served as an opportunity to announce actions that will further consolidate the ownership and anchoring of this initiative by its members.
The Atlantic African space hosts 46 major ports connected to global trade routes, and more than 350 million inhabitants, in addition to a combined exclusive economic zone exceeding 13 million km².
Moreover, this space contains more than 30% of Africa’s known offshore gas reserves and over 40% of the continent’s fishery resources. This coastline is a geostrategic and economic backbone of the African continent and can be a strategic lever, as it is positioned, at the geo-economic level, at the heart of trade routes between Africa, Europe and the Americas, at a time when more than 90% of African trade transits by sea.
Participants also highlighted the importance of the AASP on the geostrategic level, as security is emerging as a central issue, at a time when nearly 60% of piracy incidents recorded in Africa in 2024 occurred in the Gulf of Guinea, and more than 50% of drug trafficking to Europe transits through the Atlantic African space.
At this meeting, the ministers of the AASP member states unanimously underlined the importance of this Royal Initiative, a bearer of development, opportunities and prosperity for the populations of all the Member States and well beyond.