Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK)

News that on 5 July the beleaguered head of state President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) had held talks with Mahmoud Dicko the conservative imam whose mass mobilising appeal has given real clout to protests of recent weeks fuelled speculation that a settlement might be imminent...

France's President Emmanuel Macron and Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez each made their first post-lockdown foreign trips to the summit along with African Union Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat to join regional presidents: Burkina Faso's Roch Marc Christian Kaboré; Chad's Idris Déby Itno; Mali's Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta; Niger's Mahamadou Issoufou; Mauritania's Ghazouani...

Nearly a week after the charismatic conservative imam Mahmoud Dicko led tens of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets of Bamako demanding President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta's resignation the head of state remains under heavy pressure...

In spite of accusations of fraud and unfairness President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta claims he had to go ahead with the polls because they had been delayed for over a year...

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta says his envoy Dioncounda Traoré had his full authority to initiate talks with jihadist chiefs Iyad ag Ghaly and Amadou Koufa – after years of government insistence there would be no negotiation with terrorists (AC Vol 61 No 1 Advantage jihadists)...

Releasing Sanogo also makes political sense for President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta's ruling coalition as it steers him away from confrontation with southern-based populists and radicals like Oumar Mariko who see Sanogo as a hero in the 29 March parliamentary election...

With the focus of the French military presence shifting to the three frontiers zone and away from this Saharan heartland of Tuareg separatism President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and the Malian political class may be compelled to implement more seriously the decentralisation and development dimensions of the 2015 Algiers peace agreement for the north – a point to which Burkina's Kaboré obliquely referred in the press conference in Pau (AC Vol 60 No 19 The talking cure)...

For President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta the new year brings renewed diplomatic pressure – and not just from an international community exasperated by the lack of progress in implementing the 2015 Algiers peace deal...

The assembled heads of state – Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger Roch Marc Christian Kaboré of Burkina Faso (currently the G5 Executive President) Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta of Mali Idriss Déby Itno of Chad and Mohamed Cheikh el Ghazouani of Mauritania pleaded for more allies in the fight against terrorism...

Côte d'Ivoire's President Alassane Ouattara his Malian counterpart Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari and Niger's Mahamadou Issoufou who chaired the meeting gathered to try to turn the underfunded understaffed and underwhelming anti-terrorist Force Conjointe du G5 Sahel into a credible fighting machine...