Algeria and Mali restore diplomatic ties after year-long rift

Algeria and Mali have begun restoring diplomatic relations after more than a year of tension that had strained ties across the Sahel. Both countries are reinstating ambassadors and reopening airspace that had been closed to each other since April 2025. The move marks a significant thaw between two neighbours whose dispute had widened into a broader regional security concern.

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Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said on Saturday that Algeria's ambassador would return to Mali. His announcement came a day after Algiers fully reopened its airspace to civilian and military aircraft travelling to and from Mali. A spokesperson for Mali's military government, Issa Ousmane Coulibaly, said Bamako had taken reciprocal measures, confirming the restoration of diplomatic contact on both sides.

The rupture began in April last year after Algeria said it had shot down a Malian surveillance drone that had violated its airspace. Mali rejected that account, saying the aircraft was brought down within its own borders. The dispute quickly escalated into a diplomatic fallout that also led Burkina Faso and Niger to withdraw their ambassadors from Algeria in solidarity with Mali.

Those three countries are members of the Alliance of Sahel States, a bloc that has increasingly aligned itself against outside pressure and around shared security concerns. The thaw matters because the breakdown in relations had implications well beyond bilateral diplomacy. Algeria has long played a role in mediation efforts involving the Malian government and Tuareg separatist rebels, and its withdrawal from that role last year raised concerns about Mali's territorial integrity and wider stability in the Sahel.

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The region has faced a surge in attacks by armed groups linked to ISIL and al-Qaeda, adding urgency to any shift in relations among the states most directly affected. The current rapprochement also comes against a backdrop of shifting alliances in the region. Analysts have linked the growth of armed groups in the Sahel to the instability that followed the 2011 overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, which left a power vacuum and loose weapons stockpiles that were later exploited by militants.

Algeria has previously said it supports Mali's territorial integrity, and in April this year Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf reiterated that position while rejecting what he described as all forms of terrorism. What remains unclear is how far the diplomatic reset will go beyond the return of ambassadors and the reopening of airspace. It is not yet clear whether the two governments will resume the fuller political and security cooperation that existed before the dispute.

The next developments to watch are whether mediation channels are restored, whether the wider AES bloc adjusts its stance, and whether the thaw reduces tensions along the Algeria-Mali frontier.

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