Dakhla has just welcomed a new consulate from an African country. Togo opened, Thursday, July 21, a diplomatic representation in the Saharan city, thus devoting its recognition of the Moroccanness of the Sahara. Algeria and the Polisario have not yet commented on the event. On the other hand, the Moroccan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita, now accustomed to presiding over this type of ceremony, welcomed in a statement to the press that “a third of the countries of the African Union, of all the sub- regions of the continent, inaugurated a consulate in Laayoune or Dakhla”.
Since the beginning of this dynamic in 2020, Burkina Fasso, Burundi, Comoros, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Esawtini, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea (Conakry), Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Malawi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sao Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zambia, have diplomatic representations in the Sahara.
On the list, 11 African countries previously recognized ‘SADR’
On this list of African states recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, it should be noted that 11 had previously established diplomatic relations with the “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)”. These are Burkina Faso, Burundi, Esawtini, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Malawi, Sao Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zambia.
A significant figure attesting, if need be, to the erosion of the support enjoyed by the Polisario in Africa, including in certain areas of the continent which were long acquired by it. Thus, the kingdom even succeeded in convincing five countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), considered as the backyard of South Africa, the other great ally of the Polisario alongside Algeria. These are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Eswatini, the Comoros Islands and Malawi.
Morocco is slowly but surely approaching the two-thirds threshold required to obtain a revision of the Constitutive Act of the AU, as authorized by article 32, which should lead to the expulsion of the Polisario. “Amendments or revisions shall be adopted by the Assembly of the Union (of Heads of State) by consensus or, failing that, by a two-thirds majority, and subject to ratification by all Member States, in accordance with their procedures respective constitutional rights”, specifies the text.
As a reminder, Morocco had succeeded, even before its accession to the African Union in February 2017, to mobilize 28 States of the pan-African organization to sign, during the Kigali summit in Rwanda in July 2016, a letter addressed then to the President incumbent of the AU, the late Idriss Déby, calling for the “suspension of the ‘Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’ from the activities of the African Union, and of all its organs, in order to allow the AU to play a constructive and to contribute positively, to the efforts of the UN, for a definitive solution to the regional dispute over the Sahara”. Morocco will have to continue its diplomatic marathon by convincing other African countries to open a consulate before retrying the expulsion of the Polisario from the African Union.