The countries of the Western Sahel find themselves in the tightening grip of a set of mutually reinforcing crises. These include deepening seasonal food insecurity and surges of food-aid dependency, widening income inequalities, widespread childhood stunting, low levels of education attainment and pervasive unemployment, as well as acute political instability and a rapidly growing Islamist-led insurgency that has already displaced some 2.5 million people across the region. In our recent report, What Future for the Western Sahel? The Region’s Demography and Its Implications by 2045, (published by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security), we argue that, unless the Sahelian states focus on reversing the underlying conditions that sustain high fertility—the cause of a persistently youthful and rapidly growing population—they will likely not be able to resolve these crises in the foreseeable future.