Algeria and Mali are edging back toward normalised relations after 15 months of open hostility, but the shift owes more to shared alarm over the deteriorating security situation in the Sahara than to any real thaw between Algiers and Bamako.
What started in 2023 over accusations of supporting Tuareg separatists turned into an intense standoff between the two capitals. The origins of the split were largely surface-level: Algeria was wary of possible destabilisation caused by multiple coups in its southern neighbour, while Mali's young military regime was seeking to prove itself.
At the time, with the Tuareg and Islamist insurgencies still somewhat manageable for Bamako, both governments could afford the cold relations. But as the Islamist-Tuareg militant alliance expanded their control across northern Mali and the insurgency gained ground, that calculus changed. The junta now wants to survive and needs allies, while Algeria does not want to risk a Tuareg or Islamist state emerging on its southern border.
The origins of the divide
Algeria, one of the largest countries in Africa, with a significant portion of its territory jutting into the central Sahara, has long been concerned about stability in the region. That concern has extended to the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali, where Algiers sought a mediation role and helped negotiate the 2015 Algiers Accords between the Malian government and separatist forces.
When Mali experienced two successive military coups, Algiers' continued mediation role, and its relationships with the accord's Tuareg signatories, increasingly irritated the new junta, which favoured a military solution over talks.
That resentment came to a head in January 2024, when Bamako formally terminated the 2015 accord, accusing Algiers of "hostile acts" and interference in Mali's internal affairs, citing Algeria's alleged links to Tuareg separatists as well as its hosting of Imam Mahmoud Dicko, a prominent religious and political figure amongst the main leaders of the opposition against the military government.
