Briefing on the early warning system and its role in mapping risks and threats across Africa

Briefing on the early warning system and its role in mapping risks and threats across AfricaDate | 26 August 2025

Tomorrow (27 August), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene for its 1298^th session to get a briefing on the early warning system and its role in mapping risks and threats across Africa.

The session commences with an opening statement of the Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for August 2025, Mohamed Khaled. The AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye, will make an introductory remark. The session is expected to get presentations from Marie-Antoinette Rose QUATRE, Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM); Lallal Idris Lakhdar, Acting Director, African Union Counter Terrorism Centre; Jalel Chelba, Acting Director, African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation; and Maxwell Yaw Kumah, Principal Researcher and Analyst of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services in Africa (CISSA). A representative from the African Regional Standby Forces is also expected to make a statement.

The session will build on previous discussions on the theme, with the recent engagement being the 1247^th session held on 27 November 2024, where CISSA, AUCTC and AFRIPOL briefed the PSC on the Continental Early Warning and Security Outlook. From the communiqué of the session, the Council encouraged these institutions ‘to continue to provide technical assistance and to increase the dissemination of early warning reports and operational intelligence to Member States and the Regional Economic Communities and Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs), with a view to enabling them to more effectively respond to emerging threats.’ In addition, Council tasked the AUCTC, CISSA, AFRIPOL, other specialised AU agencies and Member States ‘to work together towards the establishment of a joint Cybersecurity Task Force focusing on preventing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and emerging technologies by terrorist groups for radicalisation, recruitment, training and funding.’

According to INTERPOL’s 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report, a growing share of reported crimes in Africa is cyber-related. The report goes further and highlights that, despite the rising caseloads, most African states surveyed still lack essential IT infrastructure to combat cybercrime. Just 30 per cent of countries reported having an incident reporting system, 29 per cent a digital evidence repository and 19 per cent a cyberthreat intelligence database. Additionally, while cybercrime routinely crosses national borders, 86 per cent of African countries surveyed said their international cooperation capacity needs improvement due to slow, formal processes, a lack of operational networks and limited access to platforms and foreign-hosted data. Against this backdrop, this upcoming PSC meeting will present an opportunity to advance the discussions from the 1247^th meeting and brainstorm a concrete plan for the establishment of a joint Cybersecurity Task Force.

Relatedly, of concern for tomorrow’s session will be the issue of violent extremism on the continent. It has been reported that, in the past year, nearly half of the fatalities (10,685) occurred in the Sahel, while Somalia accounted for about one-third of Africa’s total fatalities (7,289). Together with the Lake Chad Basin, these three regions comprised 99% of the continent’s militant Islamist-linked deaths. According to one recent report, ‘all five African theatres (including Mozambique and North Africa) remain highly dynamic with militant insurgents mounting offensive operations in each, especially in the Sahel and Somalia.’ There was a 14-per cent rise in battle-related deaths across the continent (15,678).’ Militant Islamist groups in the Sahel and Somalia expand their hold on territory.

Organised Transnational Crime is also another element of discussion to be addressed. In May 2025, the Council held its 1279^th meeting to discuss this theme, with a focus on the Sahel region. From the communiqué of the meeting, Council expressed concern ‘over the growing operational sophistication of transnational criminal networks exploiting structural vulnerabilities across the Sahel, including governance deficits, legitimate or popular grievances, porous borders and limited state presence.’ Yet, organised transnational crime does not take the same form across various regions of the continent. Thus, Council tasked the AU Commission to coordinate with AFRIPOL, INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and other critical stakeholders ‘in developing tailored responses to the specific geographical and logistical profiles of each criminal corridor, including joint mobile units and specialised port and desert surveillance capacities…’ From Amani Africa’s Insight of the session, the PSC was in the spotlight as it faces ‘the challenge of how to push away from fragmented, security-heavy responses to more holistic, coordinated strategies that address the structural drivers of transnational organised crimes and terrorism’.

It would also be of interest for PSC members to follow up on PSC’s earlier decisions on the need for anchoring the sessions on early warning on the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS). It is worth recalling that during its 1251^st session held on 17 December 2024, the PSC underscored the need for greater visibility and prominence of CEWS within the proposed restructuring of the Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS) Department. Previously, the 1208^th session of the PSC underscored the imperative of ‘a robust and fully functional CEWS to effectively pre-empt and mitigate conflicts.’

Following the merger of the Department of Political Affairs and the Department of Peace and Security, the structure that housed CEWS disappeared despite it being a statutory structure. Since then, instead of CEWS, established under Article 12 of the PSC Protocol, this session on early warning has been organised around the work of CISSA, AUCTC and AFRIPOL. This tends to limit the scope of analysis of threats to the domain of intelligence and law enforcement-based threats, hence making it hard security-focused. The implication of this is that it does not fully account for risks of conflict, political, social, economic and environmental issues. A case in point is the lack of attention given to intercommunal conflicts. In recent years, these conflicts have represented the majority of non-state conflicts in Africa.

During tomorrow’s session, the role of the APRM in early warning is also expected to feature. As the entity that identifies risks through its governance assessment of participating states, APRM stands to make a notable contribution in drawing attention to the governance-related risks of conflict. It is to be recalled that the 4^th Joint Consultative Meeting between the PSC and APRM on 7 to 8 April 2025 highlighted the importance of leveraging APRM’s governance-focused peer review reports to enhance early warning strategies. This builds on prior pronouncements, which emphasised closer coordination between APRM and PSC to address structural vulnerabilities and governance deficits that fuel conflicts.

From the perspective of institutional coordination on early warning and continental security outlook, an issue that deserves attention during tomorrow’s session concerns the role of the early warning mechanisms of Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs). In May 2025, during the 2^nd Annual Joint Consultative Meeting between the PSC and ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council (ECOWAS MSC), the two bodies reaffirmed in their joint communique ‘the commitment to continue enhancing cooperation between the AU PSC and the ECOWAS MSC on Peace, Security and Governance issues, including by developing stronger and more structured cooperation on conflict prevention, management, resolution, peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development. In this respect, they ‘underlined the need to enhance Early Warning and joint analysis capabilities, and to further strengthen the synergy between the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) and the ECOWAS Early Warning and Response Network (ECOWARN), including joint scenario planning, data exchange and rapid deployment of early response teams to contain potentially explosive situations.’

Discussions may also address challenges such as climate change vis-à-vis peace and security, as it is a critical factor in Africa’s complex crises, intensifying conflicts, driving forced migrations and worsening socio-economic challenges. Identified as a ‘threat multiplier,’ it amplifies existing vulnerabilities and poses new risks to human security and regional stability. The concept note of PSC’s 1263^rd session of March 2025 highlighted that ‘climate change also weakens state governance, making it harder to maintain security and public welfare. This creates opportunities for terrorist and criminal groups, who exploit climate-related frustrations to recruit and expand their influence, further threatening regional stability. Thus, climate change is not just an environmental threat – it undermines social cohesion and governance, necessitating an integrated approach that combines climate adaptation and resilience, sustainable development and peacebuilding.’

Acute competition for natural resources is a key issue slated for discussion at tomorrow’s PSC session, recognised as a significant threat to peace and security across Africa. The growing demand for limited resources like water, arable land, and minerals intensifies tensions within and between communities and states, particularly in regions such as the Sahel, Great Lakes, and Horn of Africa. This competition drives intercommunal clashes, banditry, and interstate disputes, with conflicts over water and fertile land escalating pastoralist-farmer tensions, and contests for valuable minerals fueling armed groups and transnational crime networks. The PSC is expected to explore integrating resource governance into early warning systems, prioritising sustainable management and equitable access to reduce conflict risks. This will likely involve using geospatial tools to track resource-related tensions and collaborating with RECs/RMs to craft tailored, region-specific strategies for preventing resource-driven conflicts.

Beyond these pressing challenges, the PSC is expected to address a set of emerging threats that further compound Africa’s security landscape. Among these are escalating inter-state tensions, intensifying geopolitical rivalries, and the resurgence of unconstitutional changes of government. Youth restiveness, driven by widespread political exclusion and deep-seated structural unemployment, is identified as a particularly significant risk. The Council will also consider the effects of prolonged humanitarian crises, characterised by forced displacement and the weaponisation of sexual and gender-based violence, alongside the cascading impact of post-COVID-19 economic shocks and the growing burden of unsustainable external debt, all of which continue to erode state resilience.

The PSC is also expected to look into how tools like digital maps, satellite images, smart computer analysis, and future risk monitoring can help them better understand security situations and prepare for possible threats before they happen.

The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to emphasise the need for enhanced collaboration, including information sharing, between and among Member States, as well as with international partners, including technology firms, in order to more effectively counter the exploitation of digital platforms by terrorist and violent extremist groups. The PSC may also reiterate the need for the establishment of a joint cybersecurity taskforce and, importantly, call on AFRIPOL to develop an action plan on expanding the institutional and infrastructural preparedness of AU member states to deal with the increasing cybersecurity threats and enhance transnational cooperation for addressing the cross-regional nature of these threats. Considering the increase in intercommunal conflicts, the PSC may request the CEWS to undertake the mapping of intercommunal conflicts and their trends in close coordination with the concerned RECs/RMs. The PSC may reiterate its decision from its 1208^th session on the imperative of ‘a robust and fully functional CEWS to effectively pre-empt and mitigate conflicts’. In this regard, it may call for the need for anchoring the CEWS in a structure dedicated to CEWS.