Reducing violent conflict in Africa is often cited as a reason for governments to work on lowering CO2 emissions – climate matters, but other factors are more important.

The ongoing conflicts in Mali are often taken as one and portrayed in relation to religious extremism, irredentism or plain criminality, overlooking tensions arising from changing socio-political relations at the local level. This is particularly true for the Mopti region, in Central Mali, where customary and state institutions clash in an increasingly fragile context.

West African governments aren’t investing enough in one of their greatest assets – a young population.

While climate change has not created jihadists in Mali, its effects on the livelihoods of already marginalized communities has created fertile grounds for recruitment.

Mali’s multi-layered conflicts cannot be understood from a single analytical perspective, it is not one conflict - but a dynamic system of conflicts.

Attempts by the Macina Liberation Front to rally Fulani herdsmen to its cause should not lead to pastoralists in Western Africa being portrayed as terrorists.