The initiative is based initially on a geopolitical definition of the region as an integrated region with its center as the Sahara Desert and its peripheries as the three semi-regions of North, West and Central Africa with their complementary and cooperative efforts.
The center of the Sahara, with its societal and state interactions, and the status of the mobile society and fragile state, affects the peripheries. Therefore, addressing issues, whether political/security, economic/developmental, or societal/structural, must start from the center. There is no solution to the issues of the sub-regions without addressing the source of the danger.
On this basis, geopolitical analysis is considered a cognitive necessity to understand power relations at all regional, regional and international levels and to study the effects of the project on the international system and the actors controlling it. The project proposes a new unit of analysis, which is interregionalism, and on its basis explains the two states of war/peace according to the social rule of stability/mobility, and addresses the proposal. Environmental drought/water abundance and its impact on economic trends, wealth/poverty.
Proposing new geopolitical concepts related to the region, actors, balances, and imbalances according to a multidisciplinary vision with overlapping standards and indicators enables the identification of connections and the
disintegration of relationships resulting from risks that prevent the achievement of stability, and contributes to understanding the state of complexity and interconnection between actors and putting their decisions in context.
The initiative includes many programs and projects aimed at enhancing cooperation and integration in all fields, some of which address societal crises and some of which direct state policies, and rely on local and international resources to achieve them without international support restricting local efforts with a sovereign dimension.
The local parties involved in the initiative include two levels: the state level, which relates to the influential actors in each region, and they perform the function of the regional initiator. They are: Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Congo, Chad, Central Africa, Rwanda, through an agreement of principles that includes the path of developing inter-relations between countries, especially since there are bilateral projects. It has been completed, others are under construction, and a regional infrastructure with an index exceeding 0.5/1 among them, with the possibility of developing it by relying on railways, river transport, and air transport through Sheikh Amud Airport.
At the regional level, there are many options for strengthening relations within the framework of traditional regional structures, which are the Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of Central African States, but problems remain around the Arab Maghreb Union due to the impossibility of it entering into a cooperative path due to the stagnation of its activity. The second option is cooperation across fields. In the field In the security field, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the countries of the field, in addition to the Security and Peace Council of the Central African States and the peace-keeping mechanism of Cedeau, can form a building block in interregional cooperation of a security nature. In the environmental
field, the Committee to Combat Desertification and Drought is one of the most ancient cooperative programs, and its development and revival requires great efforts.
Many sub-groups are spread between two or more countries, such as the Liptako Korma Authority, which brings together Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. It was founded in 1970 and addresses cross-border issues between the three countries, in addition to the Senegal River Development Organization, the Lake Chad Organization, the Great Lakes Union, and the Mano River Union between Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea (1973).