Open Session on Climate, Peace and Security
Open Session on Climate, Peace and Security
18 February 2026
Tomorrow (19 February), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene an open session on the ‘Nexus between Climate Change, Peace, and Security in Africa.’
The session commences with opening remarks by Obeida A. El Dandarawy, Permanent Representative of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for February. This is followed by an introductory remark from the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye. A presentation by Moses Vilakati, AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment may also feature. In addition, statements are expected from AU Member States, representatives of the Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs), and representatives of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU).
This meeting builds on the PSC’s long-standing engagement with the climate-security nexus since its 585th session in March 2016, through which the Council committed to holding annual deliberations on climate change and peace and security. In the past two years, the PSC has gone further, dedicating two sessions to the theme each year. This will mark the PSC’s 18th such session, including its 1301st Session(September 2025) and 1263rd Session(March 2025), both of which reaffirmed climate change as a risk multiplier that exacerbates political, socio-economic, and governance vulnerabilities, rather than a direct conflict trigger. Quantifying this effect, recent analysis of data from 51 African countries spanning 1960 to 2023 highlights the profound socioeconomic and political risks linked to rising temperatures. In the continent’s poorest nations, a 1°C increase is associated with a 10-percentage-point higher likelihood of exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, sometimes leading to civil conflict, whereas wealthier countries show no comparable vulnerability. Moreover, higher temperatures are linked to slower economic growth, reducing GDP growth rates by up to 4 percentage points in hotter years relative to cooler ones.
These trends are consistent with global scientific assessments, particularly findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which indicate that Africa is warming faster than the global average and is experiencing increasingly frequent and intense extreme climate events, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, and cyclones. Additionally, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reports that climate-related disasters in Africa have increased fivefold over the last 50 years.
The peace and security implications of the combination of political, institutional and development fragilities and tensions on the one hand and this climatic trend are stark. It is this interplay, not climate change in itself, that explains why 12 of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) 16 epicentres of crisis, countries marked by intertwined climate vulnerability, extreme poverty, and armed conflict, are in Africa. This underscores the need to prioritise the factors that perpetuate these vulnerabilities, account for climate impacts, and address climate change through broader policy processes.
Climate stress increasingly intersects with armed conflict, weak governance, livelihood loss and displacement, deepening instability in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and parts of Western, Central and Southern Africa. As of early October 2025, OCHA reports that severe flooding in South Sudan had affected more than 639,000 people across 26 counties, intensifying competition over land and water already strained by drought and deepening post-conflict fragility. These climate-driven livelihood losses are fueling intercommunal violence and the growth of armed rivalries, reinforcing cycles of insecurity amid rising political tensions among rival political forces in the country.
Yet the relationship between climate and security is not one-directional. War and conflicts, as well as political instability, also contribute to making climatic stresses much more devastating. Thus, on this flip side, the ongoing conflict in Sudan has intensified the effects of prolonged drought, devastating crops and livestock, and gravely eroding livelihoods and survival capacities.
These continent-wide dynamics are increasingly manifesting in specific national contexts, where climate-induced environmental stress directly amplifies localised tensions and entrenched security threats. For instance, recent research indicates that the degradation of land and water has heightened competition between farming and pastoralist communities in Nigeria, and the research further highlights that ‘the clashes over scarce resources now claim more lives annually than the Boko Haram insurgency itself’. The caveat in this respect is that it is not merely the climate change impact in intensifying competition over resources that makes the ensuing clashes deadlier. What made climate-induced inter-communal clashes over scarce resources deadlier is their combination with the widespread availability of small arms and light weapons.
Against this background, the PSC’s previous sessions, particularly the 1301st session of September 2025, were notable for situating climate change firmly within a broader climate policy framework anchored in development, justice, and equity, focusing on loss and damage, adaptation financing, and the differentiated vulnerabilities of least-developed and conflict-affected African states. In this regard, the Council is expected to discuss the implications of anchoring climate-security responses within a broader justice-oriented framework. This includes ensuring effective implementation of COP29 commitments on adaptation, loss and damage, and associated financing.
Another dimension of the climate-security nexus relates to access to climate finance. As shown below, fragile and conflict-affected countries, which are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, have the most need for climate finance. However, their risk profile means that they have the least access to climate finance. It is therefore of particular interest for the PSC to reflect on how access to climate finance can be expanded, paying particular attention to fragile and conflict-affected countries.
Tomorrow’s session is also expected to get an update on the work for the finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security. It is to be recalled that updates provided during the 1301st session indicated that the CAP is now expected to be concluded ahead of COP31, reflecting the need for input of member states, deeper consultation and alignment with existing AU frameworks, including the Africa Group of Negotiators. The delay also underscored ongoing political sensitivities, but it also highlights the strategic importance of ensuring Member State ownership and coherence across Africa’s climate and peace architectures. Since the last session and the update from Adoye, the draft CAP was presented at a technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya. The technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya on 25-27 November 2025 under the title “AU member States Validation Workshop on the Draft Common African Position on the Climate Change, peace and security nexus (CAP-CPS)’ concluded without validating the draft. The outcome statement outlined the five-step process roadmap to finalise the work.
Financing for adaptation is also expected to feature during the session. Despite being among the most climate-vulnerable regions, Africa continues to receive a disproportionately small share of global climate finance; according to the United Nations Development Programme, nearly 90% of climate funding is concentrated in high- and middle-income, high-emitting countries, while fragile states, where climate risks intersect most acutely with conflict and governance challenges, receive the least support. This imbalance is particularly stark in conflict-affected settings, where communities obtain on average only one-third of the per-capita adaptation funding available in non-conflict contexts, and countries facing protracted crises continue to receive lower levels of climate-related Official Development Assistance despite their heightened vulnerability. Against this backdrop, the PSC is likely to revisit the outcome of COP30 in Belém, where nations pledged to triple adaptation funding by 2035, a timetable that many African experts deem too slow given the continent’s acute climate vulnerabilities, and most climate finance remains loan-heavy rather than grant-based, further risking debt stress for African states. The Council is therefore expected to focus on the urgent need to honour existing commitments, reform barriers to accessing climate funds, and acknowledge that the persistent under-financing of adaptation is not merely a development challenge but an escalating driver of fragility, fiscal stress, and long-term peace and security risks across Africa that is not without global consequences.
Loss and damage is another policy issue of urgency expected to feature during tomorrow’s session. With climate-induced floods, droughts and cyclones causing repeated destruction of infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems, Africa continues to incur billions of dollars in losses annually. The African Development Bank estimates that climate change already costs African economies 2–5% of GDP each year, for some even reaching double digits. The PSC is thus likely to stress the need for accelerated operationalisation and capitalisation of the loss and damage fund in ways that are responsive to African realities.
Operationally, the session is expected to advance discussions on mainstreaming climate considerations into the AU’s peace and security architecture. This includes integrating climate-conflict indicators into early warning systems, strengthening preparedness and disaster risk reduction, and framing adaptation and governance as peacebuilding strategies. Notably, previous PSC sessions have recognised mobility and transhumance as legitimate adaptation strategies, calling for improved cross-border governance and regional cooperation to reduce climate-induced tensions, an approach of particular relevance to the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Building on this evolving operational focus, the PSC is expected to articulate more concrete follow-up measures, including clearer guidance on implementing climate-security risk assessments in situations under its agenda, strengthening coordination between early warning and response mechanisms, and enhancing collaboration with regional actors to translate these policy commitments into practical preventive and resilience-building actions on the ground.
The session may also revisit the PSC’s earlier call for ensuring that climate-peace and security considerations are fully integrated into continental and global climate policy processes, including the work of CAHOSCC and Africa’s engagement in upcoming multilateral forums such as the G20 and COP31. This remains critical for ensuring that Africa’s concerns around the security dimension of climate and the requisite measures to address the security risks of climate are not marginalised in global policy processes that tend to be increasingly dominated by mitigation and market-based approaches.
The outcome of the session is expected to be a communiqué. The PSC is likely to reaffirm its longstanding position that climate change constitutes a risk multiplier that exacerbates existing political, socio-economic and governance vulnerabilities across Africa and is not a direct cause of conflicts. In this regard, the Council is expected to reiterate its call for the expedited finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security within this framework and stress the importance of inclusive consultations, strong Member State ownership, and coherence with existing continental frameworks and Africa’s global climate diplomacy. The PSC may also underline that climate-security engagement should complement, rather than substitute, broader climate policy processes and remain anchored in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and Africa’s development priorities. The Council is also expected to call for concrete steps to operationalise the mainstreaming of climate considerations into conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts, including the integration of climate-conflict indicators into the Continental Early Warning System, the development of standardised climate-security risk assessment tools, and stronger coordination between early warning, humanitarian and response mechanisms. In addition, the PSC is expected to express concern over the widening gap between Africa’s climate needs and available financing, and call for scaled-up, predictable and accessible climate finance, particularly in grant form and with particular attention to the needs of fragile and conflict-affected states. PSC may also call for the capitalisation of the loss and damage fund and the adoption of debt suspension clauses when a country is hit by climate-induced disasters. Finally, the PSC is expected to call for enhanced coordination between the AU, Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms, Member States and international partners, and to stress the importance of ensuring that Africa’s climate-security priorities are effectively reflected in global climate negotiations and multilateral processes, including through engagement with continental mechanisms such as the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change.
Opening Strategic Address by H.E. Mohamed El-Amine Souef Chief of Staff of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission
Opening Strategic Address
Africa at a Crossroads: Pan-Africanism, the Breakdown of the Global Order, and the Future of Collective Security Pre-AU Summit High-Level Dialogue Addis Ababa, 10 February 2026
H.E. Mohamed El-Amine Souef Chief of Staff of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission
Date | 10 February 2026
Distinguished guests, Excellencies, Dr Solomon Dersso, Director of Amani, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is both an honour and a responsibility to address you today, on the eve of the 39th Ordinary Summit of the African Union, at a moment of profound significance for our continent and for the international system as a whole.
We meet under the theme “Africa at a Crossroads” because Africa is indeed facing a defining historical moment. The choices we make today will shape our position, our voice, and our agency for decades to come.
The global order on which Africa and the world have relied is undergoing a deep rupture. Multilateralism is under strain. Respect for international law is increasingly selective. Unilateralism, protectionism, and power politics are resurging, while geopolitical rivalries intensify. Global institutions, including the United Nations, face serious crises of legitimacy, effectiveness, and resources.
These developments are not distant from Africa. They directly affect our peace and security environment, our development prospects, and the credibility of the multilateral system on which we continue to depend.
At the same time, Africa is confronting serious internal challenges. Across the continent, violent conflicts persist and evolve, new forms of insecurity are emerging, socio-economic pressures are mounting, and democratic governance is under strain in several contexts. Of particular concern is the erosion of Pan-Africanism as a guiding political force underpinning continental solidarity, leadership, and collective responsibility.
History, however, reminds us that Africa has faced such crossroads before. At the end of the Cold War, the continent chose collective responsibility over fragmentation and transformed the Organization of African Unity into the African Union. Today, we are once again called upon to demonstrate that same resolve.
Africa can no longer afford to be a spectator in a rapidly changing world. The urgency before us is real. Our continent possesses immense strategic assets, including critical minerals essential for the global energy and digital transitions, vast economic potential, and a young and dynamic population.
Yet potential alone does not translate into influence.
dynamique dont les aspirations doivent trouver des réponses en termes d’opportunités, de dignité et d’inclusion.
Mais le potentiel seul ne suffit pas à conférer de l’influence.
Si l’Afrique reste confinée à l’exportation de matières premières et à la réaction face à des agendas définis ailleurs, elle continuera à occuper les marges des décisions mondiales, malgré sa position centrale dans leurs conséquences.
C’est précisément pourquoi l’Agenda 2063 demeure notre boussole stratégique. Sa vision d’« une Afrique intégrée, prospère et pacifique, portée par ses propres citoyens et agissant comme une force dynamique à l’échelle mondiale » parle directement à notre réalité actuelle. Reprendre cette vision exige que l’Afrique parle d’une seule voix, renforce sa cohésion et consolide ses institutions régionales et continentales.
La Zone de Libre-Échange Continentale Africaine constitue un instrument concret dans ce cadre. En renforçant le commerce intra-africain, en développant les chaînes de valeur régionales et en soutenant l’industrialisation, elle peut contribuer à transformer la richesse de l’Afrique en développement durable et en participation significative à la production mondiale à valeur ajoutée.
La paix, la sécurité et le développement sont indissociables.
Aujourd’hui, la sécurité collective doit être comprise de manière plus large et intégrée. Elle dépasse l’absence de guerre pour inclure la sécurité humaine, la souveraineté économique, la résilience climatique, la sécurité sanitaire et la stabilité institutionnelle. Dans ce contexte, la réforme de la gouvernance mondiale, en particulier du Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies, n’est pas symbolique pour l’Afrique. Il s’agit d’une question de légitimité, d’efficacité et d’équité. Un système qui ne reflète pas les réalités géopolitiques contemporaines ne peut assurer une paix durable.
L’Afrique, aux côtés du Sud Global, doit continuer à plaider pour un système multilatéral qui reflète le monde d’aujourd’hui, et non les configurations de pouvoir du passé.
Excellences, Mesdames et Messieurs,
L’Afrique n’est pas en retard dans le cours de l’histoire. L’Afrique est au sein de l’histoire et de plus en plus au centre. Ce qui est requis maintenant, c’est la volonté politique de s’affirmer, la clarté stratégique pour agir collectivement et le courage de passer du diagnostic à la décision.
Ce dialogue pré-sommet offre un espace opportun de réflexion et d’alignement stratégique. Utilisons-le pour réaffirmer le Pan-Africanisme comme identité politique de l’Afrique et boussole directrice, et pour tracer un chemin collectif crédible.
Sans une Afrique forte, unie et engagée, il ne peut y avoir de sécurité mondiale durable ni d’ordre mondial équitable.
Je vous remercie de votre attention et me réjouis de nos délibérations.
If Africa remains confined to exporting raw materials and reacting to agendas set elsewhere, it will remain on the margins of global decision-making, despite being at the centre of its consequences. This is why Agenda 2063 remains our strategic compass. Its vision of an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and acting as a dynamic force globally, speaks directly to our current reality. Reclaiming this vision requires Africa to speak with one voice, strengthen its cohesion, and reinforce its continental and regional institutions. The African Continental Free Trade Area provides a concrete pathway in this regard. By strengthening intra-African trade, developing regional value chains, and supporting industrialisation, it can help transform Africa’s wealth into sustainable development and meaningful participation in global value-added production.
AFRICA AND THE NEW SCRAMBLE A Call for Urgent Continental Action
AFRICA AND THE NEW SCRAMBLE
A Call for Urgent Continental Action
Date | 16 February 2026
Abdul Mohammed, Senior Fellow at Amani Africa and Former Senior UN Official and Chief of Staff of AU High-level Panel on Sudan
We are living through a rupture in the global order.
This is not a passing crisis, a cyclical downturn, or a temporary disruption. It is a rupture—moral, political, institutional, and ideological. The assumptions that governed global life for decades are not merely eroding; they are being openly repudiated. Power is no longer cloaked in the language of universal values. It is asserted through identity, exclusion, hierarchy, and fear.
This rupture is not abstract. It is already reshaping how the world organizes power, mobility, security, and value. Within this context, Africa now confronts a new scramble—quieter than the colonial past, but no less consequential.
The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy’ illustrates this shift. It reads less like a traditional security document and more like a civilizational manifesto. Its central anxiety is not war, climate collapse, or nuclear escalation—but migration. Immigration is framed not as a policy challenge, but as a civilizational threat. A racialized fear is projected outward onto the world.
Stopping migration has become doctrine—exported through alliances, embedded in diplomacy, and enforced far beyond American borders. This is not simply border control; it is population control by proxy. Collective security is mocked. International cooperation is belittled. Global public goods are treated as illusions. Multilateralism itself is recast as a shackle—an obstacle to the exercise of raw power.
From certain capitals, this may appear to be a return to classical geostrategy, in which the world is divided into spheres of influence. Across the global South, however, it evokes something more familiar. Colonialism was geo-kleptocracy.
Those who witnessed Apartheid and its ‘homelands‘—low-wage reservoirs designed for extraction—will recognize the pattern. Stealing countries was the ultimate form of global kleptocracy.
For Africa, this shift is existential.
A century and a half ago, the continent was carved up by imperial powers who treated sovereignty as a commodity to be sliced, ranked, and traded. Aborting the organic process of the forming of indigenous political entities, this process produced the most arbitrarily contrived fragments in the service of colonial powers. This bequeathed Africa administrative shells designed for extraction, not autonomy.
The leaders of independence believed they had won the political kingdom. Yet when they took control of their new capitals, they discovered that the structures they inherited were little more than fortified trading posts—designed to serve the interest of the metropole and for stifling strategic autonomy and self-determination.
Africa’s agency has therefore never rested in the nation-state alone. It has rested in collective action. In Pan-Africanism.
Thus viewed, Pan-Africanism is not nostalgia. It is political technology for survival in a hostile world system and for unshackling Africa from the chains that locked it into the global system.
As Africa sought and seeks an international system in which it gets its due, it does not consider multilateralism anchored on the UN to be optional. It is existential.
Multilateralism is existential particularly where historical, political, socio-economic and geo-strategic conditions get in the way of Pan-African collective action.
Africa has often been failed by multilateral institutions. History is equally clear: Africa (as shackled as it has been and let down by its leaders) without multilateralism is Africa without leverage.
This is why attempts to bypass African multilateral institutions—whether in peace processes, economic negotiations, or security arrangements—are not neutral acts. They replace collective leverage with bilateral dependency.
THE NEW SCRAMBLE
Today’s scramble does not arrive with gunboats. It arrives through contracts, currency, legal instruments, digital infrastructure agreements, and critical minerals partnerships. Sometimes there are spectacular displays of force meant to send a message. More often, the mechanisms are quiet.
The danger is not engagement. Africa must engage the world. The danger lies in how Africa is engaging—fragmented, reactive, and uncoordinated—precisely at the moment when external actors are acting strategically when they engage Africa.
Fragmentation has become Africa’s primary strategic vulnerability.
Here is the paradox of our time. Africa has never mattered more. By 2030, nearly 1.7 billion people will live on the continent, including 40 percent of the world’s youth. Africa holds minerals essential to the green and digital transitions. Its geography anchors vital maritime routes.
In objective terms, Africa has leverage.
But leverage unused is leverage lost. And the reason is simple: disunity.
Fifty-five states negotiating separately. Trade deals concluded country by country. Mineral agreements signed in isolation. Data governance frameworks outsourced without shared standards.
External actors arrive with scale and long-term strategy. Africa responds with improvisation and short-term calculation. Even when individual deals appear attractive, their cumulative effect is erosion.
Fragmentation enables powerful actors to play states against one another—to extract concessions incrementally and shape rules Africa did not help write.
The pattern is not new. When preferential trade regimes were replaced by reciprocal arrangements, African economies suffered deeply. Industries collapsed and jobs disappeared. Yet the response was not collective; it was bilateral petitioning.
The same pattern now appears in critical minerals. Some states restrict exports. Others prioritize rapid extraction. Others advocate local processing. Each approach is rational on its own. Together, they form no strategy.
Without shared principles on value addition and safeguards, Africa remains a price-taker in industries it should help shape.
This fragmentation extends beyond economics—to migration policy, energy transition, and digital sovereignty. Africa is not setting the agenda. It is reacting to agendas set elsewhere.
Once again, sovereignty risks becoming a commodity—sliced, ranked, and traded. Not only by traditional great powers, but by rising middle powers as well.
Africa’s future is debated in rooms where Africans are either absent—or present without influence.
The emergence of private or semi-private diplomatic mechanisms raises further questions about the future of collective security. If mediation becomes transactional—if peace becomes an investment opportunity—what becomes of the principles embedded in the charters of continental and global institutions?
Will African institutions defend their mandates? Or will they defer to ad hoc structures shaped by private interest driven external power?
This dilemma is particularly acute because Africa’s own peace and security architecture has weakened. Norms exist. Institutions exist. But political will, commitment to Pan-Africanism and the drive for engaging in the difficult task of crafting imaginative collective solutions have withered.
Institutional limitation cannot become an alibi for capitulation. Moments of global upheaval demand coordination, moral courage, political imagination and leadership.
Africa does not require uniformity. It requires agreed minimums—baseline negotiating principles, solidarity mechanisms to prevent isolation, and the discipline to refuse piecemeal bargaining.
Africa must no longer negotiate its future piece by piece.
LEADERSHIP, SILENCE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
The most dangerous element of this moment is not external pressure. It is Africa’s silence.
That silence reflects a deeper leadership deficit. Too many leaders are products of fragile systems—elevated through survival skills, external sponsorship, or transactional compromise rather than vision and legitimacy.
At a moment demanding courage, Africa is governed by managerial survivalism. Bureaucratic Pan-Africanism administers decline instead of confronting history.
This vacuum invites manipulation. It emboldens insult. It fragments Africa state by state.
Africa has known another tradition—leaders who understood Africa not as geography, but as a political project.
That caliber of leadership is rare today. Yet Africa’s promise remains intact.
Africans must not accept defensive politics. A renewed Pan-Africanism—rooted in dignity, justice, and agency—is not optional. It is necessary.
Africa must engage the world as it is—but never at the cost of dignity.
IN CLOSING
The question is no longer whether Africa matters. It does.
The question is whether Africa will matter on its own terms and for its own interest.
History does not reward potential. It rewards organization and resolve.
The emerging global order is visible. The rank being assigned to Africa is visible. If that rank is accepted today, it may define the continent’s position for generations.
This is not a call for confrontation. It is a call for coordination.
If Africa acts together, this rupture can mark the beginning of strategic autonomy. If it does not, the new scramble will end quietly—without conquest, but with consequences just as enduring and damaging.
The responsibility rests in thought, political and organizational leadership.
History is watching.
AFRICA AND THE NEW SCRAMBLE A Call for Urgent Continental Action
AFRICA AND THE NEW SCRAMBLE
A Call for Urgent Continental Action
Date | 16 February 2026
Abdul Mohammed, Senior Fellow at Amani Africa and Former Senior UN Official and Chief of Staff of AU High-level Panel on Sudan
We are living through a rupture in the global order.
This is not a passing crisis, a cyclical downturn, or a temporary disruption. It is a rupture—moral, political, institutional, and ideological. The assumptions that governed global life for decades are not merely eroding; they are being openly repudiated. Power is no longer cloaked in the language of universal values. It is asserted through identity, exclusion, hierarchy, and fear.
This rupture is not abstract. It is already reshaping how the world organizes power, mobility, security, and value. Within this context, Africa now confronts a new scramble—quieter than the colonial past, but no less consequential.
The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy’ illustrates this shift. It reads less like a traditional security document and more like a civilizational manifesto. Its central anxiety is not war, climate collapse, or nuclear escalation—but migration. Immigration is framed not as a policy challenge, but as a civilizational threat. A racialized fear is projected outward onto the world.
Stopping migration has become doctrine—exported through alliances, embedded in diplomacy, and enforced far beyond American borders. This is not simply border control; it is population control by proxy. Collective security is mocked. International cooperation is belittled. Global public goods are treated as illusions. Multilateralism itself is recast as a shackle—an obstacle to the exercise of raw power.
From certain capitals, this may appear to be a return to classical geostrategy, in which the world is divided into spheres of influence. Across the global South, however, it evokes something more familiar. Colonialism was geo-kleptocracy.
Those who witnessed Apartheid and its ‘homelands‘—low-wage reservoirs designed for extraction—will recognize the pattern. Stealing countries was the ultimate form of global kleptocracy.
For Africa, this shift is existential.
A century and a half ago, the continent was carved up by imperial powers who treated sovereignty as a commodity to be sliced, ranked, and traded. Aborting the organic process of the forming of indigenous political entities, this process produced the most arbitrarily contrived fragments in the service of colonial powers. This bequeathed Africa administrative shells designed for extraction, not autonomy.
The leaders of independence believed they had won the political kingdom. Yet when they took control of their new capitals, they discovered that the structures they inherited were little more than fortified trading posts—designed to serve the interest of the metropole and for stifling strategic autonomy and self-determination.
Africa’s agency has therefore never rested in the nation-state alone. It has rested in collective action. In Pan-Africanism.
Thus viewed, Pan-Africanism is not nostalgia. It is political technology for survival in a hostile world system and for unshackling Africa from the chains that locked it into the global system.
As Africa sought and seeks an international system in which it gets its due, it does not consider multilateralism anchored on the UN to be optional. It is existential.
Multilateralism is existential particularly where historical, political, socio-economic and geo-strategic conditions get in the way of Pan-African collective action.
Africa has often been failed by multilateral institutions. History is equally clear: Africa (as shackled as it has been and let down by its leaders) without multilateralism is Africa without leverage.
This is why attempts to bypass African multilateral institutions—whether in peace processes, economic negotiations, or security arrangements—are not neutral acts. They replace collective leverage with bilateral dependency.
THE NEW SCRAMBLE
Today’s scramble does not arrive with gunboats. It arrives through contracts, currency, legal instruments, digital infrastructure agreements, and critical minerals partnerships. Sometimes there are spectacular displays of force meant to send a message. More often, the mechanisms are quiet.
The danger is not engagement. Africa must engage the world. The danger lies in how Africa is engaging—fragmented, reactive, and uncoordinated—precisely at the moment when external actors are acting strategically when they engage Africa.
Fragmentation has become Africa’s primary strategic vulnerability.
Here is the paradox of our time. Africa has never mattered more. By 2030, nearly 1.7 billion people will live on the continent, including 40 percent of the world’s youth. Africa holds minerals essential to the green and digital transitions. Its geography anchors vital maritime routes.
In objective terms, Africa has leverage.
But leverage unused is leverage lost. And the reason is simple: disunity.
Fifty-five states negotiating separately. Trade deals concluded country by country. Mineral agreements signed in isolation. Data governance frameworks outsourced without shared standards.
External actors arrive with scale and long-term strategy. Africa responds with improvisation and short-term calculation. Even when individual deals appear attractive, their cumulative effect is erosion.
Fragmentation enables powerful actors to play states against one another—to extract concessions incrementally and shape rules Africa did not help write.
The pattern is not new. When preferential trade regimes were replaced by reciprocal arrangements, African economies suffered deeply. Industries collapsed and jobs disappeared. Yet the response was not collective; it was bilateral petitioning.
The same pattern now appears in critical minerals. Some states restrict exports. Others prioritize rapid extraction. Others advocate local processing. Each approach is rational on its own. Together, they form no strategy.
Without shared principles on value addition and safeguards, Africa remains a price-taker in industries it should help shape.
This fragmentation extends beyond economics—to migration policy, energy transition, and digital sovereignty. Africa is not setting the agenda. It is reacting to agendas set elsewhere.
Once again, sovereignty risks becoming a commodity—sliced, ranked, and traded. Not only by traditional great powers, but by rising middle powers as well.
Africa’s future is debated in rooms where Africans are either absent—or present without influence.
The emergence of private or semi-private diplomatic mechanisms raises further questions about the future of collective security. If mediation becomes transactional—if peace becomes an investment opportunity—what becomes of the principles embedded in the charters of continental and global institutions?
Will African institutions defend their mandates? Or will they defer to ad hoc structures shaped by private interest driven external power?
This dilemma is particularly acute because Africa’s own peace and security architecture has weakened. Norms exist. Institutions exist. But political will, commitment to Pan-Africanism and the drive for engaging in the difficult task of crafting imaginative collective solutions have withered.
Institutional limitation cannot become an alibi for capitulation. Moments of global upheaval demand coordination, moral courage, political imagination and leadership.
Africa does not require uniformity. It requires agreed minimums—baseline negotiating principles, solidarity mechanisms to prevent isolation, and the discipline to refuse piecemeal bargaining.
Africa must no longer negotiate its future piece by piece.
LEADERSHIP, SILENCE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
The most dangerous element of this moment is not external pressure. It is Africa’s silence.
That silence reflects a deeper leadership deficit. Too many leaders are products of fragile systems—elevated through survival skills, external sponsorship, or transactional compromise rather than vision and legitimacy.
At a moment demanding courage, Africa is governed by managerial survivalism. Bureaucratic Pan-Africanism administers decline instead of confronting history.
This vacuum invites manipulation. It emboldens insult. It fragments Africa state by state.
Africa has known another tradition—leaders who understood Africa not as geography, but as a political project.
That caliber of leadership is rare today. Yet Africa’s promise remains intact.
Africans must not accept defensive politics. A renewed Pan-Africanism—rooted in dignity, justice, and agency—is not optional. It is necessary.
Africa must engage the world as it is—but never at the cost of dignity.
IN CLOSING
The question is no longer whether Africa matters. It does.
The question is whether Africa will matter on its own terms and for its own interest.
History does not reward potential. It rewards organization and resolve.
The emerging global order is visible. The rank being assigned to Africa is visible. If that rank is accepted today, it may define the continent’s position for generations.
This is not a call for confrontation. It is a call for coordination.
If Africa acts together, this rupture can mark the beginning of strategic autonomy. If it does not, the new scramble will end quietly—without conquest, but with consequences just as enduring and damaging.
The responsibility rests in thought, political and organizational leadership.
History is watching.
Kenya's President Ruto proposes an African foreign policy for repositioning Africa at the 39th AU Assembly
Kenya's President Ruto proposes an African foreign policy for repositioning Africa at the 39th AU Assembly
Date | 14 February 2026
Solomon Ayele Dersso, PhD, Founding Director, Amani Africa
In a report he presented to the 39th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly on 14 February 2026 underway at the AU Headquarters in his capacity as the African Union (AU) Champion for the Institutional Reform of the AU, President Ruto proposed the development of ‘African foreign policy’ by five ‘foreign policy experts’ for submission and adoption by the AU Assembly during its 40th ordinary session.
This is one of many proposals put forward by the Champion in the quest to overhaul the AU institutions and make the AU fit for the challenges and changes taking place in the world. As the report pointed out, ‘[i]n an era shifting global power dynamics, Africa must reposition itself as a coherent and influential actor in shaping international norms, security and governance.’
There are at least two factors that make such repositioning imperative for Africa and the AU. The first relate to the expanding profile of the AU in global governance and the increasing demand and need for Africa to adopt position on matters of global governance. These expectations arise, among others, in the context of AU’s membership in the G20 and the role of the African three plus (A3) members of the UN Security Council. The second factor is the emergence of what Abdul Mohamed called ‘assertive external actors pursuing bilateral advantage at the expense of collective order.’
As the report that Amani Africa released on the eve of the AU Assembly observed, ‘[d]espite growing demand for the continent’s resources, diplomatic support, and political alignment, Africa continues to approach international partnerships largely through fragmented bilateral channels.’ This continues to cost Africa enormously as it limits collective leverage and reinforces asymmetrical relationships.
As natural resources, particularly critical minerals, increasingly become sites of geopolitical contestation, in a time when multilateral frameworks are unravelling and transactional and extractivist approaches take primacy, African states are exposed to another scramble for Africa, with major and middle powers targeting them individually & hence at their weakest. As Amani Africa’s report pointed out, Africa risks remaining exposed to competitive external pressures and transactional and extractive arrangements that avail Africa, and prioritise fleeting benefits that are no more than crumbs over substantive and strategic immediate and long-term interests.’
It would indeed be irresponsible for Africa to continue in a business-as-usual manner as far as international relations are concerned in the face of the unravelling of the multilateral system. Doing so would be condemning Africa to the vagaries of global disorder. It is against this background that Amani Africa’s report situated the development of common African foreign policy both as strategic imperative and a timely act. It thus held, Institutionalising a common pan-African foreign policy would provide the political and strategic framework on how Africa can advance its collective interests and project its voice effectively. Apart from serving as a necessary tool for shielding African states from the predatory tendencies of a time in which ‘anarchy is loosed upon the world’, such a common pan-African foreign policy would provide the framework for more effectively negotiating and coordinating common positions.’
The Champion’s proposal for African Common Foreign Policy avails Africa additional advantages. Such a common foreign policy also becomes ‘the basis for undertaking periodic continental strategic assessment that could avail unified analysis of global trends, external actors’ strategies, and emerging risks, thereby enabling Africa to plan and engage proactively rather than reactively.
For the AU as well, such a common African foreign policy would also provide the much-needed point of reference for reorganising and reimagining the role of the AU’s representational offices.’
Surely, adopting such a common foreign policy is necessary but not sufficient. Without commitment to such a policy and willingness to act collectively, Africa is unlikely to harness the opportunities such a foreign policy avails. It thus needs to be backed by an institutional framework that catalyses political will and commitment for the implementation of the policy.
Kenya's President Ruto proposes an African foreign policy for repositioning Africa at the 39th AU Assembly
Kenya's President Ruto proposes an African foreign policy for repositioning Africa at the 39th AU Assembly
Date | 14 February 2026
Solomon Ayele Dersso, PhD, Founding Director, Amani Africa
In a report he presented to the 39th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly on 14 February 2026 underway at the AU Headquarters in his capacity as the African Union (AU) Champion for the Institutional Reform of the AU, President Ruto proposed the development of ‘African foreign policy’ by five ‘foreign policy experts’ for submission and adoption by the AU Assembly during its 40th ordinary session.
This is one of many proposals put forward by the Champion in the quest to overhaul the AU institutions and make the AU fit for the challenges and changes taking place in the world. As the report pointed out, ‘[i]n an era shifting global power dynamics, Africa must reposition itself as a coherent and influential actor in shaping international norms, security and governance.’
There are at least two factors that make such repositioning imperative for Africa and the AU. The first relate to the expanding profile of the AU in global governance and the increasing demand and need for Africa to adopt position on matters of global governance. These expectations arise, among others, in the context of AU’s membership in the G20 and the role of the African three plus (A3) members of the UN Security Council. The second factor is the emergence of what Abdul Mohamed called ‘assertive external actors pursuing bilateral advantage at the expense of collective order.’
As the report that Amani Africa released on the eve of the AU Assembly observed, ‘[d]espite growing demand for the continent’s resources, diplomatic support, and political alignment, Africa continues to approach international partnerships largely through fragmented bilateral channels.’ This continues to cost Africa enormously as it limits collective leverage and reinforces asymmetrical relationships.
As natural resources, particularly critical minerals, increasingly become sites of geopolitical contestation, in a time when multilateral frameworks are unravelling and transactional and extractivist approaches take primacy, African states are exposed to another scramble for Africa, with major and middle powers targeting them individually & hence at their weakest. As Amani Africa’s report pointed out, Africa risks remaining exposed to competitive external pressures and transactional and extractive arrangements that avail Africa, and prioritise fleeting benefits that are no more than crumbs over substantive and strategic immediate and long-term interests.’
It would indeed be irresponsible for Africa to continue in a business-as-usual manner as far as international relations are concerned in the face of the unravelling of the multilateral system. Doing so would be condemning Africa to the vagaries of global disorder. It is against this background that Amani Africa’s report situated the development of common African foreign policy both as strategic imperative and a timely act. It thus held, Institutionalising a common pan-African foreign policy would provide the political and strategic framework on how Africa can advance its collective interests and project its voice effectively. Apart from serving as a necessary tool for shielding African states from the predatory tendencies of a time in which ‘anarchy is loosed upon the world’, such a common pan-African foreign policy would provide the framework for more effectively negotiating and coordinating common positions.’
The Champion’s proposal for African Common Foreign Policy avails Africa additional advantages. Such a common foreign policy also becomes ‘the basis for undertaking periodic continental strategic assessment that could avail unified analysis of global trends, external actors’ strategies, and emerging risks, thereby enabling Africa to plan and engage proactively rather than reactively.
For the AU as well, such a common African foreign policy would also provide the much-needed point of reference for reorganising and reimagining the role of the AU’s representational offices.’
Surely, adopting such a common foreign policy is necessary but not sufficient. Without commitment to such a policy and willingness to act collectively, Africa is unlikely to harness the opportunities such a foreign policy avails. It thus needs to be backed by an institutional framework that catalyses political will and commitment for the implementation of the policy.
African Union Floating Adrift as a New Era of Insecurity Entrenches in Africa & Anarchy is Loosed upon the World: The 2025 Review of the Peace and Security Council
AFRICAN UNION FLOATING ADRIFT AS A NEW ERA OF INSECURITY ENTRENCHES IN AFRICA & ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD
The 2025 Review of the Peace and Security Council
Date | 13 February 2026
ABOUT THIS REVIEW
2025 turned out to be a year when ‘[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ The conflicts and crises as well as geopolitical events shaping the political and security landscape of Africa unfolded during the year as ‘things fall apart’ in the world. Fundamentally, the bleak peace and security situation of the continent of the past years have become acute, crystalising the continent’s ‘new era of insecurity and instability’. As noted in a recent article prefacing this annual review, ‘[a] cross the continent, armed conflict, state fragmentation, humanitarian collapse, economic distress, climate shocks, democratic erosion, and geopolitical entanglement are converging with a simultaneity and intensity unseen in recent decades.’ The presence of such conflict and crisis situations is not fundamentally particular to 2025. Apart from their intensification, what stands out and became apparent from the political, diplomatic and security events of 2025 is that many of the conflicts and crises are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
African Union Floating Adrift as a New Era of Insecurity Entrenches in Africa & Anarchy is Loosed upon the World: The 2025 Review of the Peace and Security Council
AFRICAN UNION FLOATING ADRIFT AS A NEW ERA OF INSECURITY ENTRENCHES IN AFRICA & ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD
The 2025 Review of the Peace and Security Council
Date | 13 February 2026
ABOUT THIS REVIEW
2025 turned out to be a year when ‘[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ The conflicts and crises as well as geopolitical events shaping the political and security landscape of Africa unfolded during the year as ‘things fall apart’ in the world. Fundamentally, the bleak peace and security situation of the continent of the past years have become acute, crystalising the continent’s ‘new era of insecurity and instability’. As noted in a recent article prefacing this annual review, ‘[a] cross the continent, armed conflict, state fragmentation, humanitarian collapse, economic distress, climate shocks, democratic erosion, and geopolitical entanglement are converging with a simultaneity and intensity unseen in recent decades.’ The presence of such conflict and crisis situations is not fundamentally particular to 2025. Apart from their intensification, what stands out and became apparent from the political, diplomatic and security events of 2025 is that many of the conflicts and crises are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
