Mali: France decides to suspend its public support to the country.

After ending the last August, to ten years of military presence in Mali with the departure of the last soldier of the anti-terrorist operation “Barkhane”, France has decided to suspend its official development assistance (ODA) to this country, French media reported, citing the Quai d’Orsay, Thursday.

“In view of this attitude of the Malian junta, allied with Wagner’s Russian mercenaries, we have suspended our official development assistance to Mali,” the same sources said.

This decision, which would have been taken “two or three weeks ago”, is also denounced in a letter sent to Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday 15 November by Coordination Sud, a group of French international solidarity NGOs.

The letter was signed by 35 French organisations active in Mali and around the world, calls on the President to “to reconsider his position’’.

According to the NGO group, the suspension of French ODA calls into question nearly 70 development projects underway or planned in the country in the coming years. This suspension comes in a context of increasing isolation of Mali.

On Tuesday, neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire announced the withdrawal of its peacekeepers from the UN Mission in Mali (Minusma), in protest against the detention of its soldiers since 10 July in Bamako.

Within the same framework, the Czech Republic announced in early November that it would close its embassy in Bamako because of “the deteriorating situation”.