German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged in Bamako on Sunday (October 9) to help Mali stabilise and develop as she began a three-nation tour in Africa her main focus being on how to stem the flow of migrants to Europe.
Speaking at a joint news conference with the Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita shortly after landing, she said Mali was a country of transit for migrants, drug traffickers and people smugglers.
She said it was vital to put an immigration partnership in place between African countries and the European Union to help Mali develop and train citizens.
Merkel has described Africa, with its population of 1.2 billion people, as “the central problem” in the migration issue, and last month said the EU needed to establish migrant deals with north African countries along the lines of the Turkey deal.
Germany, France and Italy want to develop particularly close partnerships with Niger and Mali, which they see as key states in the migration issue. In Mali, Germany has over 550 soldiers as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
She insisted that Mali needed to implement the Algiers Peace accord between the government and warring Tuaregs in northern Mali.
Mali’s vast desert north has risen up four times in the last 50 years, with different groups fighting for independence or differing levels of self-rule. Hours before her arrival a senior Tuareg military leader was killed outside a United Nations compound following talks with the U.N. and the French Barkhane soldiers.
Merkel held talks with the soldiers stationed in Mali after the news conference.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016