The rapid contraction of EU presence in the Sahel has sparked debate over Europe’s diminishing influence. In 2024, the closure of the EU's capacity-building mission, EUCAP Sahel Niger, raised questions about what EU civilian missions actually achieved. EU capacity building in Sahel Niger, says Elise Ketelaars, offers important lessons for EU Common Security and Defence Policy design – and for broader crisis management and security sector reform efforts
In 2024, Niger terminated the mandate for its capacity-building mission in Sahel Niger, ESN. This marked the loss of a major regional stabilisation tool for the EU. Commentary focused largely on geopolitics: shifting alliances, external interventions, and the growing contestation of European presence. But what, precisely, had the mission built internally? ESN is useful for assessing how the design of international interventions – including leadership choices and learning structures – influences whether reform efforts accumulate over time or remain trapped in short-term cycles.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's recent evaluation of EU civilian security sector reform (SSR) missions, including ESN, concludes that they delivered limited strategic impact. Nor did they contribute significantly to durable peace. However, such evaluations often fail to explore how missions function, and how operational design and staffing choices can generate cumulative reform. It is at this level – between activity delivery and strategic outcomes – that ESN offers lessons.
Here, I draw on practitioner-informed reflection to examine how organisational design and leadership can enable or constrain reform trajectories.
Most SSR missions struggle to move beyond training, workshops, and equipment handovers. Comparative research across UN, EU, and NATO deployments shows that missions deliver activities, but seldom develop the reform learning to translate activities into institutional change.
Most security sector reform missions deliver activities, but seldom develop the reform learning to translate activities into institutional change
ESN, therefore, stands out. Before it closed, it managed to begin constructing a reform model. It introduced mobile border-control units to catalyse national reforms and increase interoperability between security actors with competing agendas. These units filled an institutional gap. Niger lacked a coherent mobility concept for remote border areas plagued by non-state armed groups and organised crime. The units thus functioned as protected 'laboratories' for reform, similar to initiatives in Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste. They allowed the testing of new operational standards, joint-force cooperation, and doctrinal procedures before national adoption.
This reform logic was reinforced by cross-institutional working groups bringing together the National Police, the paramilitary Gendarmerie, and the Garde Nationale to translate pilot lessons into broader institutional reforms. The working groups revised curricula, drafted doctrine, debated human resources policies, and fostered cooperation in a system otherwise marked by rivalry. Niger's 2023 coup halted national rollout, but the existence of cumulative reform architecture remains notable.
These organisational achievements unfolded within a broader EU policy environment that has faced strong criticism. EU-supported border governance in the Sahel, especially in Agadez, disrupted the economy. It displaced migration-linked livelihoods into drug trafficking or arms smuggling. Insecurity in Niger stems from climate, economic marginalisation, and demographic pressures. EU missions, by contrast, focused narrowly on border management.
Organisational design alone cannot compensate for policy choices that shape what missions can influence
ESN did not choose this framing; it operated within it. This does not diminish the mission’s achievements. Rather, it underscores that organisational design alone cannot compensate for policy choices that shape what missions can influence.
My experience of ESN’s leadership practices, planning structures, and reform initiatives revealed three features that helped it advance SSR in Niger.
Studies on peace operations emphasise that experienced leadership capable of navigating complex political and organisational environments is a key success factor, underlining the value of leaders with governance and reform experience. Head of Mission Antje Pittelkau introduced mobile border control units, and brought experience from other complex SSR contexts. This widened the mission’s analytical bandwidth. Sequencing, incentives, and inter-institutional dynamics were part of Pittelkau's conceptual vocabulary – an uncommon strength in missions where operational expertise dominates.
Scholars have increasingly emphasised the centrality of leadership personnel in shaping how peace operations respond to evolving contexts. Pittelkau served for roughly five years – extraordinary in SSR deployments where senior leadership often rotates annually. Her extended tenure created institutional memory, long-term relationships, and space for iterative development. In an environment where many missions must rebuild their understanding every couple of years, the EU capacity-building mission in Niger accumulated knowledge.
Conflict and peacebuilding evaluators highlight the importance of structured programme design and management to improve the quality and relevance of interventions in fragile contexts. Many SSR missions operate with minimal project budgets, and therefore little obligation to articulate a rationale, sequence activities, or justify outputs. EU capacity building in Niger, by contrast, oversaw several large, member-state-funded projects. These came with stricter planning requirements, clearer theories of change, reporting obligations, and external scrutiny. This imposed a structure and accountability rarely found in advisory missions, and introduced discipline that helped translate pilots – such as the mobile units – into a reform pathway.
ESN had stricter planning requirements, along with clearer change theories, reporting obligations, and external scrutiny. This imposed a rarely found level of structure and accountability
Despite these strengths, EU capacity building in Niger was still constrained by dynamics and operational habits common across such missions. The mission relied heavily on personnel from EU member-state security services. While operational experience is valuable, it often comes without expertise in public administration, institutional reform, or political-economy analysis. This created a drift toward training-heavy, equipment-focused activities, rather than systemic reform.
Despite efforts to streamline reform across institutions, it proved difficult to embed for lack of long-term domestic funding. In Niger, the political and financial scaffolding for reform disappeared with the withdrawal of EU capacity-building missions. This exposed a structural vulnerability: without domestic anchoring and long-term political and financial support, even the most promising pilots remain fragile.
ESN did not end because its internal reforms failed; it ended because the political context shifted. Yet its internal trajectory offers essential insights for the future of SSR engagements. It shows that SSR missions can generate meaningful reform when leadership continuity, structured pilots, and internal learning mechanisms align. But it also reveals that without deeper changes to staffing models, incentives, and organisational design, SSR missions will continue to produce activity, not transformation.
