Review of African Union's Peace and Security Architecture in a New Era of Insecurity and Global Uncertainty
Review of African Union's Peace and Security Architecture in a New Era of Insecurity and Global Uncertainty
Date | 27 August 2026
INTRODUCTION
In Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.920(XXXVIII), adopted at its 38th Ordinary Session held in Addis Ababa on 15–16 February 2025, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) expressed concern over the increasingly complex threats and challenges facing the Continent, as well as the rapidly evolving global and continental security environment. It noted that these developments were placing growing pressure on the AU’s peace and security architecture and reaffirmed that peace and security remain indispensable prerequisites for continental integration and development.
Briefing on the Situation in South Sudan
Briefing on the Situation in South Sudan
Date | 25 August 2026
Tomorrow (26 August), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1364th session to receive briefings from the AU High-Level Ad Hoc Committee for South Sudan (C5) and the AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea on the situation in South Sudan.
Following opening remarks by Mohamed Khaled, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for August, Bankole Adeoye, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), is expected to deliver a statement. The Representative of South Africa as the chair of C5 and the AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, Jakaya Kikwete, are expected to brief the Council.
The meeting comes less than four months before the country’s first general elections, scheduled for 22 December 2026, and at a moment when political mistrust, armed confrontation and humanitarian distress are placing the transition under enormous strain. The PSC last considered South Sudan on 30 April, at its 1343rd session, when it adopted the report of its 23–25 April field mission. During that session, the PSC urged the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU) to ensure that any amendment to the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) follows the due process stipulated in the Agreement. It also called for sustained engagement to secure the release of First Vice-President Riek Machar and other political detainees and enable meaningful dialogue. On the elections, it reiterated the call for ensuring all necessary preparations and establishment of conducive conditions for the organisation of the elections. In this context, the PSC requested the Chairperson of the AU Commission to expedite the deployment of a multidimensional technical needs-assessment team.
At tomorrow’s meeting, the PSC is expected to hear from the C5 and the High Representative on their respective diplomatic engagements since the Council’s April session. Their briefings are expected to highlight progress and challenges in implementing the R-ARCSS, as well as developments on the ground, including the political, security and humanitarian conditions and their implications for the December elections. The briefers are also expected to assess South Sudan’s level of electoral preparedness.
In terms of diplomatic engagement, the C5 is likely to brief about its 6-7 July visit to Juba to consult stakeholders on the R-ARCSS and electoral preparedness. South Africa, which chairs the C5, expressed optimism about an inclusive national dialogue while emphasising the need to improve security. The High Representative, Jakaya Kikwete, is expected to report on his 21 May engagement in Dar es Salaam with the SPLM/A-IO and several opposition and holdout groups. During his second visit to Juba, from 17 to 23 June, he met President Salva Kiir, other South Sudanese stakeholders, regional ambassadors and international partners involved in the peace process.
These diplomatic engagements have taken place against a deteriorating political, security and humanitarian backdrop. The latest report of the UN Secretary-General describes an increasingly volatile situation marked by armed clashes, a contested ceasefire, worsening humanitarian conditions and shrinking civic space. At the UN Security Council briefing of 6 August, the Interim Chairperson of the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC) similarly warned that the diminishing inclusivity of the RTGoNU, repeated violations of the Permanent Ceasefire and disruption of the activities of the Agreement implementation institutions and mechanisms have eroded trust among the parties and impeded implementation, particularly of the governance and security provisions.
Unilateral measures have further eroded trust. On 1 July, parliament ratified amendments to Articles 1.2.5 and 1.2.14 of the R-ARCSS, delinking the permanent constitution-making and national census processes from the December elections. The process drew criticism for failing to follow the procedure prescribed by the Agreement. The SPLM/A-IO, for instance, strongly objected that the amendments had been introduced unilaterally and undermined the power-sharing arrangements established under the Agreement. A proposed amendment to Article 8.3 that would have removed the supremacy of the R-ARCSS was, however, dropped following sustained international advocacy. Unilateral removals by President Salva Kiir have also continued, contrary to the spirit of the Revitalised Agreement. Government reshuffles in late April and June affected senior portfolios. In May, President Kiir removed 57 SPLM/A-IO legislators before parliament considered the amendments; on 3 July, he replaced two National Elections Commission (NEC) members nominated by Machar. Meanwhile, Machar, who has been detained since March 2025, remains on trial despite repeated calls for his release and that of other political detainees. In addition, AU and other regional diplomatic envoys have not been granted access to Machar.
On the security front, clashes have continued between the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) and the SPLM/A-IO and its allies, as well as with some holdout groups. Violence involving intercommunal actors has also persisted. The Greater Upper Nile region, particularly Jonglei State, remains the major flashpoint for fighting between the SSPDF and the SPLM/A-IO. Meanwhile, intercommunal violence, cattle-related attacks and conflict involving pastoralist communities have affected parts of Greater Equatoria and Greater Bahr el Ghazal, resulting in significant civilian casualties and displacement.
The humanitarian situation also remains bleak. An estimated 7.8 million people—56 per cent of the population—were projected to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity between April and July, with conflict-affected counties such as Nasir, Ulang, Nyirol and Akobo at risk of famine. Multiple public health emergencies, including the ongoing Cholera outbreak, persist, while conflict, attacks against aid workers and administrative impediments restrict relief operations. Thirty-six humanitarian workers have reportedly been killed this year alone. Yet only 35 per cent of the USD 1.46 billion required under the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan has been secured.
It is in this context that the NEC announced elections for 22 December across all ten states and three administrative areas. Some preparations are under way: the Political Parties Council announced the registration of 39 parties, while the SPLM launched an inter-party dialogue and nominated President Kiir as its sole presidential candidate. The government considers the remaining difficulties ‘manageable’ and appears determined to proceed, with voter registration expected to begin soon. Some domestic actors also oppose another postponement, while the February 2026 C5 Plus Summit emphasised that there should be no further extension of the transition. The rejection of an open-ended transition is understandable. It does not, however, settle whether credible and peaceful elections can be held in December. RJMEC has stated that critical prerequisites for the conduct of credible, peaceful and inclusive elections remain uncertain. Similarly, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of UNMISS has identified unresolved concerns over political trust, civic and political space, security arrangements, financing, constituency boundaries and institutional preparedness. During the PSC field mission in April, the Troika, European Union, IGAD Partners Forum, civil society, faith-based organisations and research institutions also warned that a unilateral electoral process could return the country to full-scale war. The choice is therefore not simply between elections and another extension. The main test is not whether an election takes place on 22 December, but whether the process provides a credible path out of transition without becoming the route back to war.
Coming at a critical juncture for South Sudan, tomorrow’s briefing offers the PSC an important opportunity to take concrete measures to prevent the country from descending into full-scale civil war. In this regard, the PSC may consider the following measures.
First, the PSC should objectively assess South Sudan’s level of electoral preparedness, determine whether conditions conducive to credible elections exist, and pronounce itself on the basis of that assessment. This assessment can build on the findings of the AU Pre-Election and Needs Assessment Mission to South Sudan, led by former Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. The mission arrived in Juba yesterday to engage stakeholders on preparations for, and challenges facing, the forthcoming elections. Its deployment follows the decision of the PSC’s 1219th session, which requested the AU Commission to deploy election observers four months before the elections and to brief the PSC both before and after the mission’s deployment.
Second, while the appointment of High Representative Kikwete is a positive step, it will not yield the expected results without strong political backing, sustained follow-up and adequate technical support. His engagement should also be coordinated with the C5, IGAD, RJMEC, UNMISS and neighbouring states through a unified diplomatic framework with agreed priorities and a clear division of labour. Strengthening the AU Mission in South Sudan and drawing systematically on the field presence of UNMISS would improve AU’s access to timely political, security and electoral information. The PSC should also lend political support to the continuation of the mandate of UNMISS during this sensitive period.
Third, the PSC should maintain close and regular oversight by convening at least once every two months until the risks associated with the electoral process have been sufficiently mitigated. These sessions should be informed by comprehensive reports from the Chairperson of the AU Commission to facilitate substantive consideration of the situation. South Sudan remains one of the situations in which the PSC could exercise meaningful diplomatic leverage. Using it now, before the situation spirals out of control, would be far less costly than responding after violence has escalated.
The expected outcome of tomorrow’s session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to reaffirm that the R-ARCSS remains the most viable framework for achieving sustainable peace, stability, unity and democratisation in South Sudan. In this regard, it may urge the parties to uphold the integrity of the Agreement and work towards a peaceful and democratic conclusion of the transitional period. While taking note of the preparations underway for the December elections, the PSC may emphasise the importance of ensuring that the elections are conducted in an orderly, peaceful, inclusive and credible manner and do not become a trigger for renewed violence. In this context, it may reiterate the need for inclusive political dialogue among South Sudanese stakeholders. The PSC may welcome the deployment of the AU Pre-Election and Needs Assessment Mission to South Sudan, led by former Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. In line with the decision of its 1219th session, it may request the AU Commission to brief the Council on the mission’s findings regarding the state of electoral preparedness. Furthermore, the PSC may decide to convene at least once every two months until the risks of renewed violence associated with the electoral process have been adequately addressed. It may request the Chairperson of the AU Commission to submit, ahead of these sessions, detailed reports on developments in South Sudan, the AU’s diplomatic activities and recommendations for further action. The Council may further request the AU Commission to provide the High Representative with the technical, financial and institutional support necessary for the effective discharge of his mandate.
Africa’s stake in the future of the UN
Africa’s stake in the future of the UN *
Date | 24 August 2026
Abdul Mohamed, a former UN senior political advisor and head of the Sudan mediation office, is a senior fellow at Amani Africa
The selection of the next Secretary-General of the United Nations comes at a moment when the institution he or she will lead is confronting perhaps the gravest crisis of relevance, authority and confidence since its establishment over eighty years ago. This is not simply another leadership transition within an international organisation. The international order is not merely changing, but the multilateral foundations on which it once rested are being progressively weakened, through geopolitical rivalry, selective adherence to international law, declining political investment and, increasingly, preferences for unilateral and transactional arrangements. The UN finds itself having simultaneously to defend its own relevance, protect the principles of its Charter, and respond to global crises whose scale makes international cooperation more necessary than ever.
For Africa, this is not an ordinary institutional crisis. The weakening – let alone the possible demise – of effective multilateralism constitutes an existential strategic threat to the continent. Africa consequently has reason to be more invested, more vocal and more politically engaged in defending and renewing multilateralism than any other region. Yet that urgency is not sufficiently visible in African diplomacy or in the debate surrounding the selection of the next Secretary-General. This contradiction should concern us.
The retreat for multilateralism should alarm Africa
Major powers can navigate, and some may even believe they can prosper in a weakened multilateral order. They possess military power, economic leverage, technological capacity, privileged positions in global finance, and bilateral networks through which they can pursue their interests. They can use multilateral institutions when convenient and bypass them when they are not.
Africa does not enjoy the same luxury. For Africa, multilateralism is not an á la carte proposition. Our stake in it is comprehensive. Peace and security, development, climate action, international finance, humanitarian protection, public health, migration, trade, technology governance and the protection of sovereignty all depend, in varying degrees, upon functioning international institutions, agreed rules and collective action. International law matters most to those who cannot rely upon power alone.
This is why the current retreat from multilateralism should alarm Africa.
The crisis did not begin yesterday. For more than a decade, geopolitical rivalry, paralysis in the Security Council, weakening respect for international law, unequal globalisation and growing distrust of international institutions have accumulated. The wars of recent years, including Gaza, have further exposed the selectivity with which international norms are sometimes applied and have damaged confidence in the universality of the system. More recently, policies pursued by the current United States administration have accelerated the retreat from multilateral approaches, reducing support for international institutions and privileging bilateral bargains, narrower coalitions and national power. Whatever the stated rationale, the practical effect is to weaken institutions, make collective rules more negotiable and increase the premium on power.
Consequences for Africa’s multilateral institutions
Apart from removing the international arrangements that support pan-African multilateral cooperation, the global retreat from multilateralism does not stop at Africa’s shores. Its continental manifestation may be equally consequential. A world increasingly organised through bilateral transactions between unequal states can weaken the African Union (AU) and the regional economic communities, circumvent common African positions, and reward fragmented national bargains over continental approaches. It can encourage external powers to deal selectively with individual states and transform Africa once again into an arena in which others compete, rather than a political space in which Africans collectively exercise agency. In its most dangerous form, this tendency threatens a new balkanization of Africa – not necessarily through the redrawing of borders, but through the fragmentation of African political purpose.
The defence of global multilateralism and the defence of African multilateralism are therefore inseparable. Defending and pushing for a just global multilateralism is in the interest of Africa’s multilateral institutions. For Africa, this retreat of the post-World War II global order requires it not only to take active interest in and extend heightened support for the UN and the forging of a more inclusive and just multilateral cooperation but also to double down on its integration push and the deepening of continental multilateral cooperation.
Africa should be concerned about the selection of the next Secretary-General
This is also why Africa’s present disposition toward the selection of the next Secretary-General is inadequate at the moment. The selection process is already in full swing. Candidates have presented their visions in public interactive dialogues and a General Assembly town hall. The Security Council has cast two straw polls in July and August indicating the views of members of the Council about each candidate at the particular point at which the polls were cast. Yet Africa has not generated the continental debate that the stakes of the selection of the next UN Secretary-General at this point in time require.
The continent should by now be asking, collectively and publicly: what kind of United Nations does Africa require in the coming decade? What must be preserved, what must be reformed, and what must be reinvented? What qualities should the next Secretary-General possess to navigate a period in which the institution may have to fight for both its relevance and its political space? And what commitments should Africa expect from candidates on peace and security, development, international financial reform, climate justice, Security Council reform and partnership with African institutions?
These are not questions to be left to New York diplomacy alone. They concern Africa’s strategic future. While the Security Council holds the key for the selection of the next Secretary-General, Africa exercises influence and responsibility by establishing the political and leadership test against which any candidate should be assessed. The question is not simply who can administer the United Nations. It is who can help navigate the organisation through this turbulent transition while contributing to the reinvention of multilateralism for a world that still desperately needs it.
The next Secretary-General must be a competent and independent leader
The next Secretary-General cannot be merely a custodian of institutional survival. He or she must be a political leader of unusual competence, independence and judgment: firmly anchored in the Charter; capable of engaging and earning the support of the great powers without becoming captive to them; credible to the Global South; attentive to smaller states; and sufficiently imaginative to understand that defending multilateralism does not mean defending every feature of the status quo. The existing order requires reform precisely because its inequities and failures have contributed to its loss of legitimacy.
Africa cannot be asked to defend indefinitely an international system that marginalises Africa. Renewing multilateralism must therefore include democratising it. Multilateralism will survive only if states and citizens can see its value, not least of all in the core purpose of the UN. That means restoring prevention, mediation and political settlement to the centre of international peace and security; defending international law consistently rather than selectively; and advancing meaningful Security Council reform. For today’s world, this additionally means supporting reform of the international financial architecture; mobilising collective action on climate change; and developing workable regimes for global public goods, including public health, food security, digital governance, artificial intelligence and the global commons.
The UN must pursue equal partnerships with African institutions
For Africa, one additional priority is indispensable: a qualitatively stronger relationship between the UN, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities. The future of multilateralism will not be constructed solely in New York. It will increasingly depend upon legitimate and capable regional institutions with political knowledge, proximity and operational capacity. In networked multilateralism, the UN should not treat African institutions merely as implementing partners after decisions have been made elsewhere but at the very least as co-creators. Partnership must increasingly mean shared political analysis, early consultation, complementarity, predictable support and respect for African agency and cooperative decision-making. Strengthening African multilateralism is part of strengthening global multilateralism.
Africa must, however, also look inward. We cannot demand multilateralism internationally while weakening it continentally. The AU requires deeper political investment, predictable financing and a willingness by Member States to treat collective positions as strategic assets rather than optional declarations. The credibility of Africa’s defence of the United Nations begins with our willingness to defend and strengthen our own multilateral institutions.
Africa must decide its vision of the future of the UN and the next Secretary-General
The selection of the next Secretary-General should therefore serve as a wake-up call. Africa needs a common strategic conversation and, where possible, a common position – not necessarily about a particular individual, but about the mandate history is imposing upon whoever assumes the office. The AU should help convene and give political expression to that conversation. African governments and diplomatic missions should engage candidates systematically against an agreed set of priorities. African intellectuals, policy institutions and civil society should debate the future of multilateralism as an African strategic question rather than as a distant institutional concern. Silence is itself a position, and at this historical moment it is the wrong one, more so for Africa.
For a continent whose quest for sovereignty, development, integration and international agency has been inseparable from collective institutions, the survival and renewal of multilateralism is not somebody else’s agenda. It is an African strategic interest of the first order. Africa should therefore speak earlier, louder and more coherently than it presently does – not because the United Nations as it exists is adequate, but because a world without effective multilateral institutions would be considerably more unequal, more transactional and more dangerous for those without great-power capabilities.
The selection of the next Secretary-General gives Africa an opportunity. Africa should seize this moment – not merely to help select the next Secretary-General of the UN, but to insist upon its place as a co-author of whatever multilateral order comes next.
* An earlier version of this article was published by the International Centre for Dialogue Initiatives and can be read here https://dialogueinitiatives.org/africas-stake-in-the-future-of-the-un/
Africa’s stake in the future of the UN
Africa’s stake in the future of the UN *
Date | 24 August 2026
Abdul Mohamed, a former UN senior political advisor and head of the Sudan mediation office, is a senior fellow at Amani Africa
The selection of the next Secretary-General of the United Nations comes at a moment when the institution he or she will lead is confronting perhaps the gravest crisis of relevance, authority and confidence since its establishment over eighty years ago. This is not simply another leadership transition within an international organisation. The international order is not merely changing, but the multilateral foundations on which it once rested are being progressively weakened, through geopolitical rivalry, selective adherence to international law, declining political investment and, increasingly, preferences for unilateral and transactional arrangements. The UN finds itself having simultaneously to defend its own relevance, protect the principles of its Charter, and respond to global crises whose scale makes international cooperation more necessary than ever.
For Africa, this is not an ordinary institutional crisis. The weakening – let alone the possible demise – of effective multilateralism constitutes an existential strategic threat to the continent. Africa consequently has reason to be more invested, more vocal and more politically engaged in defending and renewing multilateralism than any other region. Yet that urgency is not sufficiently visible in African diplomacy or in the debate surrounding the selection of the next Secretary-General. This contradiction should concern us.
The retreat for multilateralism should alarm Africa
Major powers can navigate, and some may even believe they can prosper in a weakened multilateral order. They possess military power, economic leverage, technological capacity, privileged positions in global finance, and bilateral networks through which they can pursue their interests. They can use multilateral institutions when convenient and bypass them when they are not.
Africa does not enjoy the same luxury. For Africa, multilateralism is not an á la carte proposition. Our stake in it is comprehensive. Peace and security, development, climate action, international finance, humanitarian protection, public health, migration, trade, technology governance and the protection of sovereignty all depend, in varying degrees, upon functioning international institutions, agreed rules and collective action. International law matters most to those who cannot rely upon power alone.
This is why the current retreat from multilateralism should alarm Africa.
The crisis did not begin yesterday. For more than a decade, geopolitical rivalry, paralysis in the Security Council, weakening respect for international law, unequal globalisation and growing distrust of international institutions have accumulated. The wars of recent years, including Gaza, have further exposed the selectivity with which international norms are sometimes applied and have damaged confidence in the universality of the system. More recently, policies pursued by the current United States administration have accelerated the retreat from multilateral approaches, reducing support for international institutions and privileging bilateral bargains, narrower coalitions and national power. Whatever the stated rationale, the practical effect is to weaken institutions, make collective rules more negotiable and increase the premium on power.
Consequences for Africa’s multilateral institutions
Apart from removing the international arrangements that support pan-African multilateral cooperation, the global retreat from multilateralism does not stop at Africa’s shores. Its continental manifestation may be equally consequential. A world increasingly organised through bilateral transactions between unequal states can weaken the African Union (AU) and the regional economic communities, circumvent common African positions, and reward fragmented national bargains over continental approaches. It can encourage external powers to deal selectively with individual states and transform Africa once again into an arena in which others compete, rather than a political space in which Africans collectively exercise agency. In its most dangerous form, this tendency threatens a new balkanization of Africa – not necessarily through the redrawing of borders, but through the fragmentation of African political purpose.
The defence of global multilateralism and the defence of African multilateralism are therefore inseparable. Defending and pushing for a just global multilateralism is in the interest of Africa’s multilateral institutions. For Africa, this retreat of the post-World War II global order requires it not only to take active interest in and extend heightened support for the UN and the forging of a more inclusive and just multilateral cooperation but also to double down on its integration push and the deepening of continental multilateral cooperation.
Africa should be concerned about the selection of the next Secretary-General
This is also why Africa’s present disposition toward the selection of the next Secretary-General is inadequate at the moment. The selection process is already in full swing. Candidates have presented their visions in public interactive dialogues and a General Assembly town hall. The Security Council has cast two straw polls in July and August indicating the views of members of the Council about each candidate at the particular point at which the polls were cast. Yet Africa has not generated the continental debate that the stakes of the selection of the next UN Secretary-General at this point in time require.
The continent should by now be asking, collectively and publicly: what kind of United Nations does Africa require in the coming decade? What must be preserved, what must be reformed, and what must be reinvented? What qualities should the next Secretary-General possess to navigate a period in which the institution may have to fight for both its relevance and its political space? And what commitments should Africa expect from candidates on peace and security, development, international financial reform, climate justice, Security Council reform and partnership with African institutions?
These are not questions to be left to New York diplomacy alone. They concern Africa’s strategic future. While the Security Council holds the key for the selection of the next Secretary-General, Africa exercises influence and responsibility by establishing the political and leadership test against which any candidate should be assessed. The question is not simply who can administer the United Nations. It is who can help navigate the organisation through this turbulent transition while contributing to the reinvention of multilateralism for a world that still desperately needs it.
The next Secretary-General must be a competent and independent leader
The next Secretary-General cannot be merely a custodian of institutional survival. He or she must be a political leader of unusual competence, independence and judgment: firmly anchored in the Charter; capable of engaging and earning the support of the great powers without becoming captive to them; credible to the Global South; attentive to smaller states; and sufficiently imaginative to understand that defending multilateralism does not mean defending every feature of the status quo. The existing order requires reform precisely because its inequities and failures have contributed to its loss of legitimacy.
Africa cannot be asked to defend indefinitely an international system that marginalises Africa. Renewing multilateralism must therefore include democratising it. Multilateralism will survive only if states and citizens can see its value, not least of all in the core purpose of the UN. That means restoring prevention, mediation and political settlement to the centre of international peace and security; defending international law consistently rather than selectively; and advancing meaningful Security Council reform. For today’s world, this additionally means supporting reform of the international financial architecture; mobilising collective action on climate change; and developing workable regimes for global public goods, including public health, food security, digital governance, artificial intelligence and the global commons.
The UN must pursue equal partnerships with African institutions
For Africa, one additional priority is indispensable: a qualitatively stronger relationship between the UN, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities. The future of multilateralism will not be constructed solely in New York. It will increasingly depend upon legitimate and capable regional institutions with political knowledge, proximity and operational capacity. In networked multilateralism, the UN should not treat African institutions merely as implementing partners after decisions have been made elsewhere but at the very least as co-creators. Partnership must increasingly mean shared political analysis, early consultation, complementarity, predictable support and respect for African agency and cooperative decision-making. Strengthening African multilateralism is part of strengthening global multilateralism.
Africa must, however, also look inward. We cannot demand multilateralism internationally while weakening it continentally. The AU requires deeper political investment, predictable financing and a willingness by Member States to treat collective positions as strategic assets rather than optional declarations. The credibility of Africa’s defence of the United Nations begins with our willingness to defend and strengthen our own multilateral institutions.
Africa must decide its vision of the future of the UN and the next Secretary-General
The selection of the next Secretary-General should therefore serve as a wake-up call. Africa needs a common strategic conversation and, where possible, a common position – not necessarily about a particular individual, but about the mandate history is imposing upon whoever assumes the office. The AU should help convene and give political expression to that conversation. African governments and diplomatic missions should engage candidates systematically against an agreed set of priorities. African intellectuals, policy institutions and civil society should debate the future of multilateralism as an African strategic question rather than as a distant institutional concern. Silence is itself a position, and at this historical moment it is the wrong one, more so for Africa.
For a continent whose quest for sovereignty, development, integration and international agency has been inseparable from collective institutions, the survival and renewal of multilateralism is not somebody else’s agenda. It is an African strategic interest of the first order. Africa should therefore speak earlier, louder and more coherently than it presently does – not because the United Nations as it exists is adequate, but because a world without effective multilateral institutions would be considerably more unequal, more transactional and more dangerous for those without great-power capabilities.
The selection of the next Secretary-General gives Africa an opportunity. Africa should seize this moment – not merely to help select the next Secretary-General of the UN, but to insist upon its place as a co-author of whatever multilateral order comes next.
* An earlier version of this article was published by the International Centre for Dialogue Initiatives and can be read here https://dialogueinitiatives.org/africas-stake-in-the-future-of-the-un/
Coordination between AUCTC-APRM-CISSA-AFRIPOL on Continental Early Warning Systems: Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning Systems
Coordination between AUCTC-APRM-CISSA-AFRIPOL on Continental Early Warning Systems: Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning Systems
Date | 23 August 2026
Tomorrow (24 August), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1364th meeting to discuss the theme ‘Coordination between the African Union Counter Terrorism Centre (AUCTC) – the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) – the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA) – the African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (AFRIPOL) on Continental Early Warning System (CEWS): Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning System (EWS).’
Following opening remarks by Mohamed Khaled, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and the Chairperson of the PSC for the month of August, Bankole Adeoye, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), will make a statement. The representatives of AUCTC, APRM, CISSA and AFRIPOL are then expected to deliver briefings.
The last time the PSC met on the theme of Early Warning was in December 2025 at its 1320th meeting. From the communiqué, the PSC, among other things, underlined the need to strengthen the analytical convergence between AUCTC, CISSA, AFRIPOL and the RECs/RMs. The same meeting further saw the PSC reiterating its request to the AU Commission ‘to collaborate with AUCTC, AFRIPOL, CISSA and APRM to introduce and institutionalise a dynamic tool for mapping risks and threats to peace and security in Africa, as adopted by the PSC through its communiqué PSC/PR/COMM.1298 (2025) of 27 August 2025, in order to enable Council to enhance its conflict prevention efforts.’ It is expected that this will be central to the discussions therein. Noteworthy also, the session comes just slightly over a month following PSC Committee of Experts level consultations on the ‘Proposed AU Model on Trigger Mechanism for Early Warning and Early Action,’ held in July 2026. The proposed model ‘seeks to strengthen timely and proportionate AU responses by establishing clear triggers, thresholds and response options to address emerging risks before they escalate into violent conflict.’ It is expected to serve as a decision-support tool for the PSC, connecting early warning analysis with preventive action through existing AU governance and peace and security mechanisms.
The session comes amidst continuing security crises and an ever-evolving security landscape whose scale, complexity and changing character increasingly outpace the capacity of existing early-warning architecture. The Global Terrorism Index 2026 report recorded 5,582 terrorism deaths across 2,944 incidents in 2025, a 28 per cent fall from the previous year, with the impact of terrorism falling in 81 countries, the highest number of annual improvements since 2021 Sub-Saharan Africa remains the global epicenter, accounting for over half of all terrorism fatalities, with six of the ten most-impacted countries located on the continent: Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, and the DRC. Fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa surpassed 20,000 for the fourth consecutive year, spread across the Sahel, Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, and Mozambique. In the Sahel specifically, JNIM (al-Qaeda-linked) and ISWAP/ISSP (Islamic State-linked) now collectively control more territory than at any point since the 2012 Mali crisis, with JNIM combining guerrilla attacks with governance strategies, providing basic services and arbitration in areas under its control.
With the evolving security landscape, there have also been significant operational shifts. Drone warfare has become a genuine insurgent capability. In Nigeria’s northeast, ISWAP is deploying combat drones in the Lake Chad basin at operational scale for the first time. Amani Africa’s Special Research Report, ‘Towards a New Agenda for Peace and Security in Africa: New Security Threats and the Future of the Peace and Security Council’ highlighted that one of the new security threats in Africa arises from the expansion of the use of emerging technologies. In addition, jihadist groups are no longer content with launching attacks; rather, they now administer territories and control trade routes, with their influence gradually pushing all the way to the Gulf of Guinea. JNIM’s strategy against Mali in 2026 illustrates a shift toward strangulation rather than storming capitals: JNIM formally declared an economic blockade of Bamako in April 2026, exploiting the fact that Mali imports about 95% of its fuel by road, with convoy attacks causing rationing, fuel queues and power shortages. Previously, the AU Commission, CISSA, AFRIPOL and AUCTC, were tasked to ‘thoroughly investigate the scourge of illicit financial flows, highlighting the networks and to report to PSC as soon as possible’ and called for ‘the establishment of a continental working group on illicit financing, which will inter alia, ensure the mapping of hawala/mobile money networks used by extremist terrorist groups and networks and the launch of a cross-border early warning protocol for suspicious transfers linked to convergence zones.’
Institutionally, the AU’s February 2026 Assembly decision called for the full operationalisation of the Continental Security Cartography and directed the AU Commission, together with AUCTC, AFRIPOL, CISSA and APRM, to establish a dynamic and continuously updated risk-mapping tool capable of providing the PSC with ‘a consolidated picture of threats, vulnerabilities, and potential triggers’. It also called for fast-tracking the CEWS–AUCTC Joint Analytical Cell, closer harmonisation of RECs/RMs early-warning tools with CEWS, and development of a draft AU Early Action Guideline that ‘defines triggers, thresholds, and institutionalises response with timelines’ for consideration by the PSC. Taken together, these measures situate the forthcoming validation within a broader effort to move from parallel institutional reporting towards a more integrated continental risk picture and to strengthen the link between early warning and early action. The validation exercise therefore provides an opportunity to assess whether the emerging risk-mapping architecture is being designed as a decision-support mechanism capable of prompting timely preventive action, rather than as another analytical product whose warnings are not systematically translated into response.
The process acquired further operational content at the 1345th PSC meeting on ‘Transnational Organised Crimes’ held in May 2026. The session saw the AU Commission, AFRIPOL, AUCTC, CISSA and APRM being tasked to ‘finalise by the end of 2026 a matrix of risks and threats to peace and security in Africa as a tool of the Continental Early Warning System.’ It also tasked AFRIPOL, in coordination with the Commission and RECs/RMs, to establish a continental criminal-intelligence mechanism for the ‘continuous mapping, analysis and dissemination of criminal flows, corridors and networks’ and to produce an annual consolidated continental threat assessment. This broadens the scope of continental early warning beyond conventional conflict indicators to include the evolving nexus among terrorism, organised crime, illicit economies and cross-border security threats.
The governance dimension has advanced in parallel. At its 1349th meeting, the PSC welcomed the APRM’s development of ‘an early warning system dedicated to governance within the APRM’ and its inclusion in the matrix of risks and threats being finalised by relevant AU structures, while urging Member States to integrate APRM assessments into CEWS. The Joint Burayu Declaration similarly called for institutionalised data- and information-sharing so that APRM country findings ‘feed systematically into APSA early warning and mediation planning,’ within the wider coordination involving AUCTC, AFRIPOL and CISSA. This direction was reinforced by the 35th APRM Forum in February 2026, which called for efforts to ‘position the APRM as an effective early-warning tool for conflict prevention on the continent,’ and by the March engagement between the AUC Deputy Chairperson and APRM leadership, where discussions focused particularly on ‘governance monitoring, early warning and conflict prevention.’ The key question is therefore whether governance indicators will be integrated into a common analytical picture rather than treated as a parallel stream of information.
The most recent 1354th ministerial session on counter-terrorism held in July 2026 added another specialised layer. Alongside adopting the African Union Continental Strategic Plan of Action on Countering Terrorism in Africa (2026 -2030), the Council called for ‘specific indicators on radicalisation and violent extremism’ to be integrated into CEWS ‘to enable early detection and timely intervention.’ This places terrorism-specific early warning within the implementation of a broader continental counter-terrorism framework. Taken together with parallel efforts on criminal intelligence and governance-related risks, these decisions point to an increasingly ambitious system in which terrorism analysis, criminal intelligence, governance vulnerabilities and broader conflict indicators are expected to inform one continental warning architecture. The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to take note of the briefings by AUCTC, APRM, CISSA and AFRIPOL and may welcome progress towards validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and the APRM Early Warning System. Council may underscore that the validation should support the institutionalisation of a dynamic and continuously updated continental risk-mapping mechanism capable of providing an integrated picture of emerging threats, vulnerabilities and potential triggers. It may further emphasise the need for the validated tools to strengthen analytical convergence among AUCTC, APRM, CISSA, AFRIPOL and CEWS, including through common analytical standards, greater methodological alignment and secure information-sharing arrangements. Building on earlier decisions, the PSC may emphasise the imperative of regular consolidated horizon-scanning briefings covering emerging and escalating risks, indicators requiring preventive action, cross-border contagion dynamics and scenario options requiring Council guidance, while also encouraging systematic circulation of early-warning products to Member States to inform timely responses. It may also call for adequate technical, human and financial resources for the operationalisation, regular updating and sustained use of the tools, and for governance-related risks identified through the APRM EWS, alongside specialised terrorism and organised-crime indicators, to be systematically incorporated into the broader CEWS architecture.
