REVOLUTIONARY AES PASSPORT: HAMMER BLOW TO COLONIAL BORDERS!

The Alliance of Sahel Sates (AES) passport is here! It means citizens of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger can now travel freely to one another’s countries.

But the significance is more revolutionary than that. As pan-African activist Ibrahima Konaré (Anka Transition Dèmè Platform) - one of the first recipients - explains, the travel document is a step towards dismantling the colonial legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, when European powers carved up our continent.

The new passport replaces ones endorsed by ECOWAS - the regional West African bloc the AES trio of nations quit before forming their own confederation. Some worry that the AES will now lose access to the free circulation of goods and people enjoyed in the ECOWAS zone by ECOWAS member states.

However, proponents of the new AES passport see things differently. They argue that, in practice, ECOWAS countries don’t really respect free circulation. Often, people get charged with various hidden or hard-to-understand fees when they show up at the borders of neighbouring states.

The new AES Confederation says it plans to serve as a model for what true free circulation looks like by addressing these issues while also working towards the complete eradication of colonial borders and unification under a single federal government.

Do you think the AES will achieve its goal of creating a single federal pan-African government and citizenship for all member states?