L’une des responsabilités les plus exigeantes qui incombent à la Vice-Présidence de la Commission de l’Union africaine consiste à veiller à ce que les ambitions collectivement définies par nos États membres puissent disposer, dans la durée, des moyens nécessaires à leur mise en œuvre. Cette responsabilité est souvent perçue comme une question de budgets, de mobilisation de ressources ou d’équilibres financiers. Elle est naturellement tout cela. Pourtant, au fil du temps, j’en suis venue à penser qu’elle renvoie également à une interrogation plus profonde, qui dépasse les seuls mécanismes de financement et touche à la manière dont nous nous approprions et organisons notre capacité collective à agir au service de nos ambitions communes.

Les contributions des États membres demeurent, et demeureront, le socle politique, institutionnel et financier de notre Union. Elles traduisent bien davantage qu’un engagement comptable ; elles expriment la volonté souveraine des États africains de porter ensemble un projet continental qui les dépasse individuellement. Rien ne saurait s’y substituer. Mais cette évidence fondamentale ne nous dispense pas d’une autre réflexion. À mesure que la mise en œuvre de l’Agenda 2063 prend progressivement corps, que les attentes de nos citoyens grandissent et que les responsabilités confiées à notre organisation continentale, à nos Communautés économiques régionales et à nos gouvernements s’élargissent, une question devient inévitable : comment permettre à l’Union africaine d’accroître progressivement sa capacité d’action sans jamais remettre en cause le rôle central des États dont elle tire sa légitimité ?

Ma conviction est que cette réponse ne réside ni dans une dépendance accrue à l’égard des financements extérieurs, ni dans une quelconque substitution aux responsabilités des États membres. Elle suppose plutôt que nous apprenions à mieux mobiliser les ressources que l’Afrique a elle-même fait émerger : ses banques et ses institutions financières, ses investisseurs et ses entreprises, ses fondations, ses diasporas, ses universités et ses centres de recherche, ainsi que cette nouvelle génération d’entrepreneurs qui transforme déjà le visage économique du continent. Pourtant, lorsque j’évoque ces ressources, je ne pense pas d’abord au financement lui-même, mais aux relations qui rendent ce financement possible et l’investissement plus attractif.

L’Afrique ne manque pas de ressources. Elle dispose aujourd’hui d’entreprises capables d’investir à l’échelle du continent, d’institutions financières de plus en plus solides, d’investisseurs institutionnels, de fonds souverains, de fonds de pension, d’une philanthropie émergente et d’une diaspora dont les capacités financières, intellectuelles et entrepreneuriales n’ont probablement jamais été aussi importantes. Pris séparément, chacun de ces acteurs constitue une force considérable. Pourtant, leur potentiel collectif demeure bien supérieur à la somme de leurs capacités individuelles, parce qu’ils continuent trop souvent à évoluer dans des univers qui se croisent davantage qu’ils ne se rencontrent véritablement.

J’ai progressivement compris que la véritable question n’était donc plus seulement de savoir comment mobiliser davantage de ressources. Elle consistait à comprendre comment créer les conditions dans lesquelles ces ressources choisiraient naturellement de converger vers une ambition commune. Autrement dit, avant d’être un défi financier, le financement devient un défi de coopération et d’appropriation.

Et toute coopération durable finit toujours par poser la même question : celle de la confiance. Mais la confiance elle-même n’est pas une réalité unique.

Il existe d’abord la confiance que les investisseurs internationaux, les partenaires et les marchés accordent au continent. Elle influence notre attractivité, le coût du capital et la capacité de nos économies à attirer les investissements dont elles ont besoin. Cette confiance demeure essentielle et continuera de l’être. Mais elle dépend de nombreux facteurs qui dépassent largement les responsabilités d’une institution continentale.

Il existe ensuite une autre confiance, plus silencieuse, qui se construit entre les Africains eux-mêmes. Celle qui conduit une banque africaine à financer une entreprise située dans un autre pays du continent, un investisseur à croire dans un projet au-delà de ses frontières, une université à collaborer avec un laboratoire d’un pays voisin, ou des entrepreneurs à bâtir ensemble des chaînes de valeur régionales. Plus cette confiance progresse, plus l’intégration cesse d’être seulement une ambition politique pour devenir une réalité économique.

Pourtant, la réflexion qui m’a conduite à écrire ces lignes porte sur une troisième forme de confiance, plus discrète encore, mais peut-être la plus déterminante pour une organisation comme l’Union africaine.

Elle naît dans cet espace où les chefs d’État, les responsables publics, les institutions panafricaines et les forces économiques du continent peuvent apprendre progressivement à mieux se connaître, à mieux comprendre leurs contraintes respectives, à identifier les opportunités et à construire ensemble une vision commune de l’intérêt général, tout en développant une véritable appropriation de cette vision.

Un ministre et un dirigeant d’entreprise peuvent souhaiter exactement la même chose : davantage d’investissements, davantage d’emplois, une économie plus compétitive. Pourtant, le premier porte la responsabilité de l’intérêt général, des équilibres sociaux, de la souveraineté et du temps politique, tandis que le second vit avec le risque, la concurrence, le coût du capital et l’obligation de décider vite. Aucun n’a tort. Ils observent simplement la même réalité depuis deux ensembles de responsabilités différents. Or il arrive encore trop souvent que ces deux mondes ne se rencontrent qu’au moment où leurs contraintes respectives sont déjà devenues des sources de désaccord.

Une telle confiance ne peut être décrétée. Elle ne naît pas davantage d’une conférence annuelle ou d’une déclaration commune.

Elle se construit lentement, lorsque le dialogue devient une habitude, que chacun apprend à comprendre les contraintes de l’autre avant de défendre les siennes et que les relations survivent aux divergences parce qu’elles reposent sur une connaissance réciproque devenue suffisamment solide.

Je crois que c’est précisément sur ce terrain que l’Union africaine peut apporter l’une de ses contributions les plus utiles, en offrant un cadre institutionnel au sein duquel de telles relations peuvent prendre racine et se développer.

Toute organisation intergouvernementale vit de la confiance que lui accordent les États membres qui l’ont créée. C’est le fondement même de sa légitimité. Mais les grandes institutions du XXIᵉ siècle devront probablement apprendre aussi à construire la confiance des forces économiques qu’elles sauront rassembler autour d’un projet commun d’intégration et de prospérité partagée, une ambition déjà formulée il y a plus de soixante ans par nos pères fondateurs. Faisant partie de la mise en œuvre du mandat que les États membres lui ont confié, ce rôle de mobilisation de la confiance vise précisément à contribuer à faire naître une appropriation commune autour de l’objectif de donner aux ambitions collectivement définies une capacité d’action plus grande que la simple somme des efforts individuels.

Car si le véritable défi consiste désormais à mieux relier les forces dont l’Afrique dispose déjà et à concentrer leur force partagée vers la réalisation de nos objectifs collectifs, il devient impossible de réfléchir au financement sans réfléchir à la manière dont nos économies se sont historiquement organisées. Les ressources ne circulent jamais au hasard. Elles empruntent les chemins que les sociétés ont progressivement dessinés au fil du temps. Comprendre les défis d’aujourd’hui et de demain suppose donc parfois de revenir sur les itinéraires d’hier.

Pendant plusieurs siècles, l’Afrique n’a pas seulement vu ses ressources exploitées et confisquées ; son espace économique a également été organisé selon une logique qui n’était pas la sienne. Les routes commerciales, les ports, les voies ferrées, les infrastructures et parfois même les frontières économiques répondaient avant tout à un même impératif : relier les territoires africains aux grands centres industriels du reste du monde bien davantage qu’à leurs voisins immédiats. L’objectif n’était plus de faire circuler la richesse à l’intérieur du continent, comme le faisaient autrefois les grandes routes transsahariennes, sahéliennes ou swahilies qui avaient vu naître de puissants centres urbains africains. Il était de plus en plus d’en organiser l’extraction et l’acheminement vers l’extérieur.

L’héritage le plus profond de cette période n’est donc peut-être pas seulement matériel, il est aussi relationnel.

Une économie est aussi une géographie des relations. Elle révèle qui échange avec qui, qui finance qui, qui produit pour qui et, finalement, qui apprend à faire confiance à qui. Pendant longtemps, les économies africaines se sont davantage habituées à commercer avec le reste du monde qu’entre elles, à rechercher des partenaires extérieurs plutôt que continentaux, et à regarder vers les grands centres économiques internationaux avant de se découvrir pleinement les unes les autres. Les habitudes de coopération se sont construites ailleurs. Les habitudes de confiance aussi. Aucune de ces trajectoires, cependant, n’est irréversible.

Depuis les indépendances, plusieurs générations d’Africaines et d’Africains travaillent précisément à les redessiner. L’Organisation de l’unité africaine, puis l’Union africaine, les Communautés économiques régionales, les institutions financières africaines, l’Agenda 2063 et ses projets phares, dont la Zone de libre-échange continentale africaine, ainsi que l’émergence d’entreprises présentes dans plusieurs régions du continent, participent d’un même mouvement historique : reconnecter progressivement l’Afrique avec elle-même.

Au fond, les économies ne se développent pas uniquement parce qu’elles échangent davantage. Elles se développent parce qu’en échangeant davantage, elles apprennent progressivement à se connaître. Chaque investissement réussi facilite le suivant. Chaque partenariat durable réduit un peu l’incertitude. Chaque projet mené en commun crée des habitudes de coopération qui rendent les initiatives futures moins risquées et plus naturelles.

À force de se fréquenter, les sociétés ne construisent pas seulement des marchés. Elles créent une ressource invisible. Cette ressource porte un nom : la confiance.

Elle est peut-être l’infrastructure la plus discrète de toutes. Elle ne figure sur aucune carte, ne se mesure ni en kilomètres ni en mégawatts, et pourtant elle réduit les distances entre la décision et l’action, rapproche l’État de l’entreprise, la recherche de l’investissement, les institutions des innovateurs et les ambitions des moyens de les réaliser. Les économies qui savent organiser cette proximité disposent d’un avantage que les statistiques peinent encore à mesurer, mais que les investisseurs reconnaissent presque immédiatement.

Cette intuition rejoint les travaux d’Elinor Ostrom, lauréate du prix Nobel d’économie en 2009. En étudiant les conditions qui permettent à des communautés de gérer durablement des ressources communes, elle observait que lorsque des individus développent des normes communes et des pratiques de réciprocité, ils construisent un capital social à partir duquel peuvent se former des arrangements institutionnels durables. La confiance n’y apparaît plus comme une simple disposition morale. Elle devient un actif collectif, capable de produire des institutions plus solides et une coopération plus durable.

Cette réflexion ne se limite d’ailleurs pas au continent africain. À Nairobi, en octobre 2026, lors du Sommet sur la confiance, j’ai eu l’occasion de souligner combien notre capacité collective à agir dépend de la qualité des relations que nous construisons. Le thème de la 81ᵉ session de l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies donne aujourd’hui à cette réflexion une résonance mondiale, en plaçant la restauration de la confiance au cœur de la transformation du multilatéralisme.

C’est peut-être ici que commence la prochaine conversation économique africaine, et l’Union africaine est particulièrement bien placée pour offrir un espace institutionnel naturel au sein duquel cette conversation peut être initiée, entretenue et traduite en bénéfices partagés.

Pendant longtemps, nous avons pensé l’intégration africaine comme une accumulation progressive d’institutions, d’accords, d’infrastructures et de marchés. Cette œuvre était indispensable et demeure loin d’être achevée. Mais à mesure que ces fondations prennent forme, une autre exigence apparaît. L’intégration ne consiste plus seulement à rapprocher des économies ; elle suppose désormais de rapprocher durablement les femmes et les hommes qui auront la responsabilité de la faire vivre. La prochaine étape de notre intégration est peut-être moins institutionnelle que relationnelle.

C’est précisément dans cet espace que l’Union africaine peut exercer une responsabilité particulière. Sans se substituer aux États membres, au secteur privé ou aux marchés, elle possède une capacité singulière : celle de créer les conditions d’un dialogue durable entre des acteurs qui poursuivent souvent les mêmes ambitions sans toujours partager les mêmes contraintes ni les mêmes temporalités. En ce sens, son rôle dépasse la coordination des politiques ; elle peut également agir comme un catalyseur de confiance au service de l’intérêt général africain.

Les infrastructures relient des territoires. Les institutions organisent des responsabilités. La confiance relie les volontés et ancre l’appropriation. Et c’est souvent de la rencontre de ces forces que naissent les transformations qui traversent le temps et changent durablement le cours de l’histoire.

One of the most demanding responsibilities entrusted to the Office of the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission is to help ensure that the ambitions collectively defined by our Member States have, over time, the means required for their implementation. This responsibility is often understood as a matter of budgets, resource mobilisation or financial balance. It is, naturally, all of these things. Yet over time, I have come to believe that it also raises a deeper question, one that goes beyond financing mechanisms alone and touches upon the way in which we take ownership of, and organise, our collective capacity to act in pursuit of our shared ambitions.

The contributions of Member States remain, and will remain, the political, institutional and financial foundation of our Union. They represent far more than an accounting commitment; they express the sovereign will of African States to carry together a continental project that transcends each of them individually. Nothing can substitute for this. Yet that fundamental principle does not relieve us of another responsibility. As the implementation of Agenda 2063 progressively takes shape, as the expectations of our citizens grow, and as the responsibilities entrusted to our continental organisation, our Regional Economic Communities and our governments expand, an unavoidable question arises: how can the African Union progressively strengthen its capacity to act without ever calling into question the central role of the States from which it derives its legitimacy?

My conviction is that the answer lies neither in greater dependence on external financing nor in any substitution for the responsibilities of Member States. Rather, it requires us to learn how to mobilise more effectively the resources that Africa itself has brought forth: its banks and financial institutions, its investors and businesses, its foundations, its diasporas, its universities and research centres, and the new generation of entrepreneurs already transforming the economic face of the continent. Yet when I speak of these resources, I am not thinking first and foremost about financing itself, but about the relationships that make financing possible and investment more compelling.

Africa does not lack resources. It now has companies capable of investing across the continent, increasingly robust financial institutions, institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, an emerging philanthropic sector and a diaspora whose financial, intellectual and entrepreneurial capacities have probably never been greater. Taken individually, each of these actors represents a considerable force. Yet their collective potential remains far greater than the sum of their individual capacities, because they too often continue to operate in worlds that intersect more often than they truly meet.

I have gradually come to understand that the real question is therefore no longer simply how to mobilise more resources. It is how to create the conditions in which those resources would naturally choose to converge around a common ambition. In other words, before financing becomes a financial challenge, it becomes a challenge of cooperation and ownership.

‘…the real question is therefore no longer simply how to mobilise more resources. It is how to create the conditions in which those resources would naturally choose to converge around a common ambition. In other words, before financing becomes a financial challenge, it becomes a challenge of cooperation and ownership.’

And every form of lasting cooperation ultimately raises the same question: that of trust. Yet trust itself is not a single reality.

There is, first, the trust that international investors, partners and markets place in the continent. It influences Africa’s attractiveness, the cost of capital and the ability of our economies to attract the investment they need. This confidence remains essential, and it will continue to be so. But it depends on many factors that extend far beyond the responsibilities of any continental institution.

There is then another, quieter form of trust, one that is built among Africans themselves. It is the trust that leads an African bank to finance a company in another country on the continent, an investor to believe in a project beyond national borders, a university to collaborate with a laboratory in a neighbouring country, or entrepreneurs to build regional value chains together. The further this confidence develops, the more integration ceases to be merely a political ambition and becomes an economic reality.

Yet the reflection that led me to write these lines concerns a third form of trust, more discreet still, but perhaps the most consequential for an organisation such as the African Union.

It emerges in the space where Heads of State, public officials, pan-African institutions and the continent’s economic actors can gradually come to know one another better, understand each other’s constraints, identify opportunities and build together a shared understanding of the common good, while developing a genuine sense of ownership over it.

A minister and a business leader may want precisely the same things: greater investment, more jobs and a more competitive economy. Yet the former carries responsibility for the public interest, social balances, sovereignty and the rhythms of political life, while the latter must contend with risk, competition, the cost of capital and the need to make decisions quickly. Neither is wrong. They are simply looking at the same reality from two different sets of responsibilities. Too often, however, these two worlds meet only once their respective constraints have already become sources of disagreement.

Such trust cannot be decreed into existence. Nor does it emerge from an annual conference or a common declaration.

It is built gradually, when dialogue becomes a habit, when each side learns to understand the constraints of the other before defending its own, and when relationships are able to survive disagreement because they rest upon sufficiently strong mutual understanding.

I believe this is precisely where the African Union can make one of its most useful contributions, by providing an institutional setting in which such relationships can take root and develop.

Every inter-governmental organisation lives by the confidence placed in it by the Member States that created it. That is the very foundation of its legitimacy. But the great institutions of the twenty-first century will probably also need to learn how to build the confidence of the economic actors they are capable of bringing together around a shared project of integration and common prosperity, an ambition already articulated more than sixty years ago by our founding fathers. As part of its effort to deliver on the mandate Member States entrusted to it, this role of mobilizing confidence seeks to help create shared sense of ownership around the objective of giving collectively defined ambitions a capacity for action greater than the simple sum of individual efforts.

For if the real challenge is increasingly to connect more effectively the forces Africa already possesses and channel their shared power into delivering on our collective objective, it becomes impossible to think about financing without also considering the way in which our economies have historically been organised. Resources never circulate at random. They follow pathways that societies have progressively drawn over time. Understanding the challenges of today and tomorrow therefore sometimes requires us to revisit the routes of yesterday.

For several centuries, Africa did not merely see its resources exploited and appropriated; its economic space was also organised according to a logic that was not its own. Trade routes, ports, railways, infrastructure and, at times, even economic boundaries were shaped above all by the same imperative: to connect African territories to the major industrial centres of the wider world far more than to their immediate neighbours. The purpose was no longer to circulate wealth within the continent, as the great trans-Saharan, Sahelian and Swahili trading networks had once done, nurturing powerful African urban centres. It was increasingly to organise its extraction and movement outward.

The deepest legacy of that period may therefore be not only material, but relational.

An economy is also a geography of relationships. It reveals who trades with whom, who finances whom, who produces for whom and, ultimately, who learns to trust whom. For a long time, African economies became more accustomed to trading with the rest of the world than with one another, to seeking external rather than continental partners, and to looking towards major international economic centres before fully discovering each other. Habits of cooperation were built elsewhere. Habits of trust were, too. None of these trajectories, however, is irreversible.

‘ For a long time, African economies became more accustomed to trading with the rest of the world than with one another, to seeking external rather than continental partners, and to looking towards major international economic centres before fully discovering each other. Habits of cooperation were built elsewhere. Habits of trust were, too. None of these trajectories, however, is irreversible.’

Since independence, successive generations of African women and men have worked precisely to redraw them. The Organisation of African Unity and later the African Union, the Regional Economic Communities, African financial institutions, Agenda 2063 and its flagship projects, including the African Continental Free Trade Area, as well as the emergence of companies operating across several regions of the continent, are all part of the same historical movement: progressively reconnecting Africa with itself.

Ultimately, economies do not develop merely because they trade more. They develop because, through greater exchange, they progressively come to know one another. Every successful investment makes the next one easier. Every lasting partnership reduces uncertainty a little further. Every project undertaken together creates habits of cooperation that make future initiatives less risky and more natural.

Through sustained interaction, societies build more than markets. They create an invisible resource. That resource has a name: trust.

It may be the most discreet infrastructure of all. It appears on no map and is measured neither in kilometres nor in megawatts, yet it shortens the distance between decision and action, brings the State closer to enterprise, research closer to investment, institutions closer to innovators, and ambitions closer to the means required to realise them. Economies capable of organising such proximity enjoy an advantage that statistics still struggle to capture, but that investors recognise almost immediately.

This intuition resonates with the work of Elinor Ostrom, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. In examining the conditions that enable communities to manage common resources sustainably, she observed that when individuals develop shared norms and practices of reciprocity, they build social capital upon which durable institutional arrangements can be constructed. Trust, in this understanding, is no longer merely a moral disposition. It becomes a collective asset capable of producing stronger institutions and more durable cooperation.

This reflection is not confined to the African continent. In Nairobi, on October 2026, at the Trust Summit, I had the opportunity to emphasise how deeply our collective capacity to act depends on the quality of the relationships we build. The theme of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly gives that reflection a global resonance today, placing the restoration of trust at the heart of the transformation of multilateralism.

It may be here that Africa’s next economic conversation begins, and the African Union is particularly well placed to provide a natural institutional space in which that conversation can be initiated, sustained and translated into shared benefit.

For a long time, we have thought of African integration as the progressive accumulation of institutions, agreements, infrastructure and markets. That work was indispensable and remains far from complete. Yet as these foundations take shape, another imperative is emerging. Integration is no longer only about bringing economies closer together; it must also bring closer, in a lasting way, the women and men who will be responsible for making that integration live. The next stage of our integration may therefore be less institutional than relational.

‘ Integration is no longer only about bringing economies closer together; it must also bring closer, in a lasting way, the women and men who will be responsible for making that integration live. The next stage of our integration may therefore be less institutional than relational.’

It is precisely in this space that the African Union can exercise a particular responsibility. Without substituting itself for Member States, the private sector or markets, it possesses a distinctive capacity: to create the conditions for sustained dialogue among actors who often pursue the same ambitions without necessarily sharing the same constraints or time horizons. In this sense, its role extends beyond policy coordination; it can also act as a catalyst of trust in the service of Africa’s common interest.

Infrastructure connects territories. Institutions organise responsibilities. Trust connects wills and anchors ownership. And it is often from the meeting of these forces that transformations emerge which endure and change the course of history.

There are no military coups in Somalia and South Sudan. Unconstitutional change of government is not, however, limited to instances of military seizure of power only. As established in the Lomé Declaration and the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG), there are four other instances in addition to a coup d’etat that constitute unconstitutional changes of government. Of relevance for the context of both Somalia and South Sudan is one of the two instances of unconstitutional retention of power by incumbents. This most particularly concerns Article 23(5) of ACDEG, which involves unconstitutional retention of power through the adoption of constitutional or legal changes that constitute ‘an infringement on the principles of democratic change of government’.

Throughout 2026, there has been growing political contestation in Somalia involving constitutional disputes. This most recent round of political crisis resulted from the confrontation among the various political forces in Somalia over the contentious process of the revision of the 2012 Constitution and the model for the conduct of elections. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has pursued a transition from the longstanding indirect, clan-based electoral system to universal suffrage under a one-person, one-vote model. Despite fierce rejection of the process and outcome of the constitutional revision by the opposition, President Mohamud pushed through parliament the contested constitutional amendments in March 2025.

Opposition groups have strongly rejected the constitutional changes. They argued that the changes were adopted unilaterally and without the broad political consensus required for such fundamental reforms. Consequently, they do not recognise the extension of President Mohamud’s and parliament’s mandates and maintain that his continuation in power and that of the parliament are constitutionally illegitimate. The resultant political impasse subsequently escalated into armed confrontation, when opposition groups sought to stage protests on 4 June. It was the deployment by the Government of security forces to the residences of the former Prime Minister and former President of Somalia ahead of the planned protest that precipitated the boiling over of the mounting tension into armed confrontation. On 3 June, fighting erupted in Mogadishu between government forces and armed groups loyal to opposition leaders near the residences of former Prime Minister Hassan Khaire and former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. The confrontation continued into 4 June before subsiding following mediated talks.

The constitutional dispute has since taken a more consequential turn. Last month, Somalia’s opposition filed an application to the Supreme Court of Somalia to determine the constitutionality of the process of the revision of the constitution and extension of the term of office of the President and Parliament. On 5 November 2026, the Supreme Court handed down a judgment on this application after consideration of the submissions of the applicants and the respondent, declaring extension of term of office of federal institutions, including the President’s unconstitutional. The five Supreme Court Judges unanimously decided that the constitutional amendments adopted in 2026 did not extend the four-year mandates of the incumbent federal institutions, declaring that the mandates of the Parliament and the Federal Government expired on 14 April and 15 May 2026, respectively. The ruling also invalidated decisions taken by these institutions after those dates, and tasked the government to perform routine caretaker functions. The Supreme Court also directed political stakeholders to agree on a consensus electoral framework within 30 days and conduct elections within 90 days.

In response to the Supreme Court’s exercise of its mandate, President Mohamud rejected the ruling of the Court and announced the replacement of the President of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice warned of threats to his life and violent interference by the government following the seizure by armed forces of the premises of the Supreme Court. In response, Ben Saul, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, has publicly called on Somalia’s leadership to respect the independence of the Supreme Court, constitutional procedures and limits on presidential terms.

For the AU, this development presents the latest instance in which the question of the application of Article 23 (5) of the ACDEG arises. While the application of this provision to the case of Somalia was not clear-cut between the expiry of the term of office of federal institutions in April and May 2026 and the determination of constitutionality by the Supreme Court,  the 5 November Supreme Court ruling leaves no doubt as to the applicability of this provision. The fact that the Court ruled unanimously makes the case more compelling. Under the circumstances, the refusal of the President to respect the decision of the Court represents a case of infringement of the principles of democratic change of government envisaged in Article 23(5) of ACDEG, warranting the invocation by the AU Peace and Security Council of its Article 7(1)(g) mandate.

The situation in South Sudan, while not the same as Somalia, invites similar questions about the conformity of measures that the Government of South Sudan took in recent months with Article 23(5) of ACDEG. The transitional system of governance of South Sudan is governed through the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS). The R-ARCSS, under Articles 8.2 and 8.3, makes the Agreement supreme over the Constitution and national law. The R-ARCSS, whose compliance during the transitional process is determined by the Revitalised-Joint Evaluation and Monitoring Commission (R-JEMC), requires under Article 1.9.4, consensus of the signatory parties to the Agreement, including the first vice president who signed the agreement as leader of the SPLM/A-IO, for any changes to the transitional system of governance and implementation of the Agreement.

Despite this and under the pretext of the convening of elections, President Salva Kiir, one of the signatories of the R-ARCSS, unilaterally not only secured the passage of Constitutional Amendment No. 13 and the Election Act Amendments in September but also dissolved, on 22 September, by Presidential Decree, the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU), the national and State legislatures and all State and Administrative Area governments, removed the First Vice President and four Vice Presidents, and appointed a caretaker administration answerable to him alone. The amendments and dissolution were adopted outside the procedures laid down in the R-ARCSS (Arts. 1.9.4 and 8.4), which the Transitional Constitution still declares supreme (Arts. 8.2, 8.3 and 1.18.2). These measures were also adopted by bypassing R-JEMC, the institution mandated to monitor compliance with R-ARCSS.

It was within this context that the UN Human Rights Commission on South Sudan warned of the steps taken by President Kiir’s government as amounting to a ‘constitutional coup’. The contention is that the amendments and the Presidential Decree were adopted without compliance with established constitutional governance processes of South Sudan and, as such, infringe the principles of democratic change of government, contrary to Article 23(5) of ACDEG.

As with the case of Somalia, the developments in South Sudan invite the consideration of the application of Article 23(5) of ACDEG and the exercise by the PSC of its Article 7(1)(g) responsibility. Additionally, South Sudan also raises a major question about the legality or legitimacy of the electoral processes to be undertaken under such circumstances.

These two cases in Somalia and South Sudan are not a typical manifestation of unconstitutional change of government that takes the form of military seizure of power. Yet, the constitutionality question that they both raise is no less serious as far as the AU norm on unconstitutional change of government is concerned. The trend so far shows that the AU does not respond as strongly and proactively to such cases as it does to coups. The two cases present the AU with the opportunity, at the very least, to make an assessment of their compliance with Article 23(5) of ACDEG and to demonstrate that it is serious about upholding its norm on unconstitutional changes of government beyond coups. Ignoring these cases would further accentuate the crisis of credibility facing AU’s enforcement of the norm on Unconstitutional Changes of Government.

Abdul Mohammed

For families in parts of the Horn of Africa, the season has brought too little rain, failing crops and shrinking pasture. In some areas, October rainfall has been absent or very low. In others, the rains have arrived unevenly, after households have already lost livestock, depleted their savings or been driven from their homes by conflict. The result is a daily struggle to find food, water and safety.

Now the climate outlook points to a new danger, rising loss and damage to parts of the world that contributed very little to the major cause of climate change, greenhouse gases emission. Described by the African Union (AU) as the strongest since 1950, historic ‘super’ El Niño, this season’s El Niño is already very strong and is expected to persist into early 2027. For the Horn of Africa, as the chiefs of UNOCHA and WMO put it, it is going to be season of extreme weather ‘that threatens to inflict severe humanitarian and economic pressure on conflict-affected nations across (the region).’

For much of the equatorial and southern Greater Horn, the current forecast is for wetter-than-normal October–December rains, with heightened risks of flooding. That forecast means that people weakened by one shock may soon face another: destructive floods, damaged crops, lost livestock, cut-off roads and fresh displacement.

This is the human face of the climate induced super El Niño of 2026-2027 in the Horn: not a simple choice between drought and flood, but exposure to both, in a region where affected people have little left with which to withstand either.

The crisis is unfolding amid devastating wars in affected countries, with no clear end in sight for many of them. Sudan’s war has uprooted millions and helped drive one of the world’s gravest hunger emergencies. Fighting has also returned to northern Ethiopia, raising fears that a new conflict could spread beyond the country. In Somalia, insecurity continues to disrupt livelihoods, markets and aid delivery. As rivalry in the Red Sea intensifies, conflict and geopolitical confrontation are increasingly entangled with the region’s security and economic life. These are not separate theatres for the people caught between them. War destroys homes and farms, blocks roads, empties markets and makes it dangerous for humanitarian workers to reach those in need.

People are being trapped between war and environmental shock. A family fleeing violence may arrive in a drought-affected area with no land to cultivate and no livestock to sell. A pastoralist who has lost animals may have to travel farther for water, crossing into areas where insecurity or competition over scarce resources puts the family at risk. A farmer who has planted after a poor season may see a flood wash away the crop. Displacement then increases pressure on host communities already struggling to meet their own needs.

The numbers point to the scale of this exposure, but they cannot capture its daily cost. In Sudan, 19.5 million people face acute hunger, while funding shortfalls are forcing the World Food Programme to reduce assistance to 800,000 people through the end of 2026. In Somalia, 5.4 million people are projected to face crisis levels of hunger or worse between October and December. The United Nations and Somali authorities warn that El Niño-related floods could destroy crops, cut communities off from markets and trigger further displacement.

The scarcity is not only a scarcity of food. Humanitarian resources are shrinking just as needs are rising. In Somalia, funding shortages have already contributed to the closure or scaling back of health services, while many children and mothers are no longer receiving nutrition support. Across the region, insecure roads, restricted access and underfunded operations make it harder to deliver assistance even when it exists. When aid is cut, the consequences are immediate: a meal missed, treatment delayed, a child’s condition worsening, a family left without shelter or clean water.

Beyond humanitarian aid, the enormous human and socio-economic costs that societies that contributed little to climate change but bear the heavy brunt of this season’s El Niño highlights the urgency and imperative of responsible countries delivering on their commitments for adaptation and loss and damage. It is reported that the African Development Bank (AfDB) warned that the anticipated ‘super’ El Niño could inflict a combined 10 to 20 billion U.S. dollars economic hit on African countries, with adaptation finance requiring nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars.

The phrase ‘perfect storm’ is often used too easily. Here, it describes a real convergence of dangers: war, displacement, food insecurity, disrupted trade and rising costs, fragile health systems, climate extremes and a humanitarian response with diminishing capacity. Each pressure makes the others more dangerous. Conflict prevents people from adapting to climate shocks. Climate shocks deepen hunger and displacement. Displacement stretches already scarce services. Funding cuts leave families with fewer options to survive.

This convergence also connects with events beyond the region’s borders. In Sudan, the World Food Programme has warned that disruptions to maritime supply routes in the Red Sea are increasing fuel and fertilizer costs, while food prices remain high. For farmers, higher input costs can mean less fertilizer and lower production. For traders and aid agencies, fuel and transport costs determine how much food can reach a market or an isolated community. A conflict at sea can therefore compound hunger in a village far inland.

The challenge is to prepare for both sides of the forecast while protecting people now. This entails coming to the rescue of communities facing the immediate effects of poor rains, and those at risk from flooding in the weeks ahead.

To that end national and local authorities and non-state actors along with humanitarian responders and those who bear the most responsibility for climate change need to invest in protecting humanitarian access, restoring and sustaining food and nutrition assistance, preparing flood-prone areas, supporting local health services, and helping farmers and pastoralists preserve the means to recover. It also means confronting the political reality at the heart of the crisis: while wars continue, every drought, flood and price shock becomes more deadly.

As stressed by the chiefs of UNOCHA and WMO in a joint press briefing in Geneva, the people of the Horn are not facing the shock from the super El Niño in isolation. They are living through it amid war, displacement and the erosion of the support systems on which survival depends. They are caught between a season that has failed them and rains that may come too heavily, between conflict that drives them from home and aid that cannot reliably reach them. Their lives should not be reduced to a forecast or a statistic. They are a call for urgent action to end the wars, protect livelihoods and ensure that early warnings are matched by help before the next shock arrives. And importantly for countries that bear the most responsibility for climate change to make good on their commitments relating to financing of adaptation and loss and damage and for the upcoming COP31 as the ‘super’ El Niño COP to be where existing climate finance commitments will be delivered, as underscored in the extraordinary ministerial meeting of the AU held under the theme Strengthening Africa’s Preparedness, Resilience and Climate Action: Responding to the Anticipated 2026 El Niño while Advancing Africa’s Priorities Towards COP31 and COP32.

Abdul Mohammed and Samira Gaid

On 12 September, the Houthis arrived on Mayun, also known as Perim, the island which sits at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandab Strait, after sweeping southward along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Their strategic foothold menaces a chokepoint through which roughly 12 per cent of the world’s trade by volume transits. Riyadh has solicited U.S. assistance. Washington has pledged intelligence support but has not yet committed to any direct action.

With Bab el-Mandab suffering interruptions in tandem with the war in and around the Strait of Hormuz between the United States, Israel and Iran, the two straits are increasingly merging as the war in Iran widens. This development has substantially elevated the growing significance of the western shores of the Red Sea.

In the same week that Riyadh was pressing its case in Washington, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro was there too on a mission for closer relations and recognition. Somaliland is marketing itself as a safe trading partner and anchor for security in the Red Sea. But the case most likely to win over Washington – its location, Berbera’s facilities and what they might do against the Houthis – is also the one most likely to draw Somaliland into an external alliance system and militarise it from the start.

For Somalia, the war across the ocean is no longer a remote affair. It is starting to restructure Somali politics.

The Crisis Is Larger Than Domestic Divisions

Somalia is already afflicted by a major internal fracture. The constitutional amendments adopted in March are contested, and elections have been postponed without a consensus-based framework in place. Puntland and Jubaland are alienated from the Federal Government, and the opposition in South West has on several occasions resorted to violence. Recent clashes around Baidoa on 3 September led to civilian displacement and demonstrated how political disagreements can easily turn into armed confrontations.

Clan and sub-clan politics continue to matter for representation, security and access to resources. But decades of clan-centred analysis now obscure more than they explain. The decisive new force is external security entanglement and how this is becoming the major factor tipping the scale.

Somali actors increasingly seek protection, finance, weapons, training, diplomatic recognition and market access from outside powers. Those powers seek ports, airfields, intelligence access, commercial concessions and local partners in rivalries originating far beyond Somalia.

This transaction sustains itself. Domestic fragmentation invites external sponsorship; external sponsorship disincentivises compromise. Political leaders find external insurance against domestic competitors, while external actors find Somali proxies for broader rivalries. Though Somalia has been an arena for foreign patronage since Independence, what has now changed is the currency. Patrons no longer only provide reversible assets like money, weapons, and training. Today, the currency is recognition, basing agreements, and defence relationships. Ports, transport corridors and military facilities sit at the centre of the new geopolitical contest in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia.

The risk is that the next Somali political settlement, like any of the political settlements in the Horn of Africa, will be determined less by negotiation between Somalis than by the competing demands of Middle Eastern and international alliances.

Somalia remaking the state Through Political Settlement

Somalia’s state-building record, still largely a work in progress, should be judged more generously. Having lost a functioning state in 1991, Somalis have reconstructed their political life without a reliable blueprint. They have negotiated, improvised and adjusted. Crises were often managed rather than resolved. Yet this approach preserved a measure of continuity, enabled changes of national leadership and kept alive the possibility of a common political order.

That process was an ongoing political settlement. It was not a one-off conference, a final constitution, or an agreement among a small coterie of elites. It was the changing set of understandings about who could legitimately exercise authority, how the centre and regions would share power and resources, how security would be provided, and how conflicts would be defused and returned to negotiation before they became violent. Federalism provided a language for coexistence among actors who deeply distrusted each other, but who knew none could govern Somalia alone.

African soldiers fought and died to protect that settlement, and multilateral and bilateral partners provided security, finance and diplomacy. In spite of fragmentation, their contributions allowed Somalis to remain the main actors in the reassembly of the state.

This is now at risk, and the shift is already visible on the ground. As soon as leaders rely on patrons for security and survival, compromise is riskier, and room for maneuver narrows. Somali leaders may hold office but become junior partners in competing factions, unable to make deals for Somalia as a whole, beholden to foreign interests.

Federalism Is Becoming Foreign Policy

The warning was made explicit in January when the Federal Government of Somalia terminated a number of deals with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on defense, security, and the ports of Berbera, Bosaso and Kismayo. Somaliland, Puntland and Jubaland denounced Mogadishu’s move and stated that their ties with the UAE would not be affected. The UAE continues to have close commercial and security relationships with Somaliland and Puntland and a presence in Jubaland. A constitutional argument about federal powers had morphed into a power play over international orientation.

The Federal Government also has strategic partnerships, particularly with Turkey, and growing ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Turkey’s relationship with the Federal Government is the largest single external security relationship in the country, covering training, a permanent facility, maritime and naval agreements and now energy exploration. The United States will remain at the center of counterterrorism efforts. In December 2025, Israel also recognized Somaliland, bringing in a new security actor directly across the Bab el Mandeb from Yemen.

The relationships are not in themselves illegitimate, and they are not two permanent blocs. Somalia requires investment and security cooperation. The problem is that foreign relationships now flow through competing Somali centres of authority. Various forces are accountable to different systems of training and finance, while ports and airfields are attached to distinct networks. Federalism then ceases to be about shared government and starts to split the country into external spheres of influence.

Al-Shabaab, too, profits from the expanding battlefield. Its alleged arms and training ties to the Houthis link a Somali insurgency to a war on the other side of the Gulf of Aden. The resurgence of piracy, as a result of the diversion of naval forces to other tasks, drives home the message that the security apparatus on the two coasts can no longer be considered separately.

Somaliland Risks Recognition Without Sovereign Freedom

Somaliland’s case deserves respect. It is based on a unique colonial history, the violent history of the defunct Somali state and over three decades of de facto self-rule. Its institutions and democratic transfers of power count. Its claims for recognition can no longer be written off as an outside creation.

Yet, recognition, if granted on the basis of the logic of the current war, could hollow out independence of its content. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland on 26 December 2025 was a diplomatic breakthrough, but tied Somaliland’s status immediately to the fight against Iran and the Houthis. It also tied this status to Israel’s standing in the Muslim world and its conduct in Palestine—an association Hargeisa will have to navigate both at home and abroad. In July, Le Monde reported building work at Berbera Airport that would enable its future use by the UAE, Israel and the United States. Somaliland has denied that a formal Israeli base agreement exists. The dispute itself, however, alters the threat environment. The Houthis have warned that an Israeli presence would be considered a military target.

If recognition is won mainly through offering strategic access, as President Irro’s recent visit to Washington underscored, it will come with obligations that Somaliland cannot control. A newcomer to the international system may be given a place in an alliance before it has secured the freedom to make its own foreign policy.

Somaliland could therefore be militarised before its sovereignty is consolidated. Berbera could become valuable to foreign militaries and vulnerable to their enemies at the same time. A state should enter international society with freedom of choice, not with a pre-assigned role in somebody else’s war.

A Political Settlement Before External Capture

The multilateral response, not least of all on the African continent that currently remains way behind the curve, needs to adapt rapidly, cognizant of the deepening fusion of security and economic dynamics of the Gulf and the Horn of Africa.

In Somalia, this means that fighting Al-Shabaab and maintaining the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) are still important, but neither can replace a political settlement. The United States has informed the AU it will block the use of assessed contributions to finance AUSSOM after 31 December, the last straw that may break AUSSOM’s back. This exposes both a funding crisis and the eroding international consensus that underpinned Somalia’s recovery.

The African Union, IGAD, the United Nations and the European Union should make restoring Somali political agency their central objective, while contributing to shielding internal contestation from external competition. They should help the Federal Government, Federal Member States and major opposition forces to agree on a credible electoral and constitutional pathway, workable federal arrangements and rules for resolving disputes without force. This must build on Somalia’s tradition of incremental bargaining, not impose another external formula.

External relations must be regulated as well. Somalis need agreed procedures for access by foreign militaries, port concessions, provision of security assistance, and major resource contracts. Disclosure at the national level and prior review would make it more difficult for external powers to shop among rival authorities. Units trained by foreigners must serve accountable Somali institutions, not individual leaders or patrons.

Somaliland requires a genuine political track, with AU and IGAD patronage, which takes its history and aspirations seriously but does not prejudge the result. The short-term priority should be to ensure that its status question is not resolved by military bargains concocted by the Bab el-Mandab war.

External powers present on both shores have their own part to play and must accept minimal restraints: no support for armed contests between Somali authorities, no clandestine deals that shift the regional balance, no use of Somali territory in external wars without a transparent and legitimate Somali decision.

Time is running out. Somalia may reclaim its culture of political settlement while its leaders still have maneuvering space, or its factions can strike deals with states that want bases, ports and proxies. In the first path, strategic location becomes national patrimony. In the second, Somalis rule in parts while outsiders own the whole.

Sudan and Libya show where the second road leads. It is the immediate duty of Somalia’s rulers and their allies, as well as the multilateral bodies, to prevent that road from becoming Somalia’s destiny. Somalis must resolve the power equation amongst themselves before other countries’ alliances determine it for them.

By Abdul Mohammed

Sudan arrives at this General Assembly as expanding war across the Middle East and the Red Sea consumes diplomatic attention. The conflict with Iran has disrupted the Gulf and global supply routes, while the latest Houthi advance around Bab el-Mandeb has turned the maritime corridor facing the Horn into an active strategic front. Sudan risks being pushed aside precisely as its war becomes more dangerous.

That would be a grave mistake. Sudan sits where the Horn, the Gulf, North Africa and the Sahel meet, and its war is sustained by external weapons, finance, technology and political sponsorship. Neglect will draw it deeper into the wider confrontation.

Yet purposeful movement on Sudan is still possible. The war is not simple or fully “ripe” for negotiation, but the principles are known, the mediation formations exist and extensive consultations have taken place. Political cooperation could convert this groundwork into a practical path forward.

Responsibility rests especially with two sets of actors that already know one another: the mediators and Sudan’s political and civic formations. Their fragile relationship has known tensions, disappointments and measured progress. Yet it is a foundation, reinforced by Track II mediators and facilitators who have kept channels open. It must now be deepened and given common purpose. Each side must ask what more it can do.

To describe Sudan as a comparatively low-hanging fruit must never trivialize its tragedy. Nothing about it is easy. But in diplomatic terms, relative to the gathering storms, Sudan is unusually actionable. The planned face-to-face meeting of the Quad and the Quintet on 24 September could become the moment when consultation gives way to joint action.

A Humanitarian System at the Edge

On 14 September, the World Food Programme reported that almost 20 million people face acute hunger. Its funding had fallen from 645 million dollars last year to 206 million dollars this year, leaving a gap of almost 300 million dollars merely to sustain current operations. Many recipients receive only half rations. The International Organization for Migration warned that the entire humanitarian system could collapse within weeks.

This is no longer only a crisis of access. Aid organizations have delivery capacity they cannot use because resources are disappearing. Red Sea disruption is raising the cost of food, fuel and fertilizer, while severe dryness threatens agriculture in Darfur. The World Meteorological Organization warns that a very strong El Nino may persist into early 2027, bringing failed rains and crop losses in some parts of the Horn and destructive rain and flooding in others. In Sudan’s shattered economy, either shock could sever access, displace more people and spread disease. Combined with war and vanishing aid, it threatens an unprecedented regional famine emergency.

A week ago, the UN Security Council convened its second Informal Interactive Dialogue on Sudan. It confirmed that Sudan still has a diplomatic constituency. But attention is not strategy. A humanitarian system approaching collapse cannot be answered by another cycle of concern without decisions.

The War Trap Has Become a Red Sea Danger

The battlefield has changed, but the logic of the war has not. The Sudanese Armed Forces’ recovery and battle field gains restored confidence and national pride among many Sudanese. But military recovery is not national recovery. The Rapid Support Forces retain depth across much of Darfur, Kordofan remains contested, and fighting and drone attacks are spreading, including in Blue Nile.

Neither belligerent has a credible military path to governing a unified Sudan, yet each can deny victory to the other. Every advance renews hope for a stronger negotiating position; every setback brings new mobilization and sponsorship. Diplomacy is postponed until after the next offensive. This is the war trap: movement without resolution and sacrifice without a realizable national purpose.

Its destination is de facto partition as rival administrations, security structures, war economies and external relationships harden. Sudan needs no formally declared border to be divided by force. A war fought in the name of unity can become the instrument that destroys it. On that path there will be no victors, only the vanquished: the Sudanese people, their national institutions and the country itself.

The Quad members – the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – are not detached from this upheaval. Their interests and relationships can deepen differences, but they also provide unusual leverage. Cooperation on Sudan would not solve the region’s larger wars. It would show that collective action remains possible even among states divided elsewhere.

Mediation Has Produced a Foundation but Not Yet a Strategy

Sudan does not lack initiatives, envoys or communiques. It lacks a common strategy understood and carried by both the mediators and Sudanese political and civic actors.

The Quad established an important foundation: Sudan’s unity and sovereignty, no viable military solution, a humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire, and a credible civilian-led political transition. Its effort to secure a truce has stalled, but the objective remains indispensable.

The Quintet – the African Union, IGAD, the United Nations, the European Union and the League of Arab States – has concentrated on the civilian political track. Berlin established shared principles and supported a joint Sudanese call to end the war. Addis Ababa consultations tested positions across political and civic formations. A good-offices mission to Khartoum from 8 to 10 September then listened to the authorities, political actors, the Democratic Bloc, women and youth, and those associated with a proposed dialogue.

These efforts have established a working relationship between the formal mediators and Sudanese political and civic formations. It is intermittent and not consistently trusted, but it is real. Track II mediators and facilitators have strengthened it by sustaining channels, testing ideas and connecting constituencies when official engagement slowed. This foundation creates reciprocal responsibility. Mediators must turn listening into strategy, protect the civilian track and prevent rival initiatives from splintering it. Sudanese formations must convert consultation into a minimum national position capable of sustaining negotiations. Track II actors should support the common architecture rather than compete with it. Each can do more, and each should be accountable for doing so.

This is notable progress, but consultation is not negotiation. It tests consent, maps convergence and helps design a process; it does not create a legitimate dialogue or produce a transition. The next step must command the confidence of armed actors on security obligations and of political and civic communities on Sudan’s constitutional future.

The planned Quad-Quintet meeting on 24 September is the best immediate opportunity to make that transition. It should not create another mechanism. It should make the existing mechanisms work in one direction, drawing on structured Sudanese input before the meeting and returning promptly to Sudanese political and civic actors with a clear programme afterwards.

What the Meeting on 24 September Should Produce

First, the Quad and Quintet should agree on a single political destination: one sovereign Sudan; no sustainable military solution; preservation of legitimate state institutions without permanent belligerent entitlement; and an inclusive, Sudanese-owned process leading to civilian and constitutional government. These propositions already reflect substantial Sudanese and international convergence.

Second, they should adopt an immediate humanitarian rescue and de-escalation package. Measures often called confidence-building should sit inside a political strategy of de-escalation. Confidence is an outcome; the purpose is to break the war’s momentum and open a path to a humanitarian truce and then cessation of hostilities. Initial steps could protect population centres and humanitarian routes; establish local non-attack arrangements; restrain drone attacks and new fronts; open direct military communication; enable detainee releases; and establish verification. The logic is to reduce, reciprocate, verify and expand, converting security openings into political engagement.

Urgent financing must be included. Hunger, displacement and institutional collapse deepen recruitment, predation and fragmentation. Keeping people alive and communities connected is part of preserving the country for peace.

Third, internal de-escalation must be matched by external restraint. War cannot contract while arms, drones, finance, mercenaries and logistics replenish expectations of military advantage. The Quad is uniquely placed to begin an external de-escalation compact. Its members need not agree on every regional question to agree that none benefits from the disappearance of a coherent Sudanese state.

Fourth, they should confirm a disciplined division of labour. The Quad should pursue humanitarian arrangements, military restraint and cessation; the Quintet should advance the civilian political process. The African Union and IGAD should provide the regional bridge, while the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy connects the tracks. Track II facilitators should sustain discreet channels and offer technical support within this common strategy. This is strategic complementarity, not institutional merger.

Finally, the meeting should produce an action plan, not simply common language. A 90-day programme through December should sit within a six-month horizon, assigning responsibilities and reviews. Within 30 days, the mediators should assess progress with representative Sudanese actors: is violence contracting, is access improving, is external support for escalation diminishing, and is civilian space expanding? The measure of diplomacy is whether politics becomes more authoritative than the battlefield.

The Political Sequence Must Be Protected

The political track also requires clarity. Its stages will overlap as humanitarian, military and political dynamics are managed simultaneously. But flexibility cannot become ambiguity. Each phase needs a defined purpose, an expected product and a clear test of completion.

Preparatory consultations should achieve three things: first, identify convergence and unresolved differences; second, agree the purpose, principles, participation criteria, safeguards and decision rules of the process; and third, secure consent for a credible preparatory mechanism and define how the civilian track relates to negotiations with armed actors. Their product is an agreed process design, not a claim to represent Sudan or govern it.

A credible preparatory mechanism should then organize an inclusive intra-Sudanese political dialogue, with its mandate and criteria agreed before names become a contest over patronage. The dialogue should produce a common anti-war framework, minimum principles for unity and civilian constitutional government, and a representative mandate for the next negotiations. Its product is a shared Sudanese political framework, not a premature government.

The political process should convert that framework into negotiated agreements on transitional authority, security arrangements, accountability and implementation, while connecting it to the humanitarian truce and cessation track. A national dialogue proper belongs to a later, sufficiently grounded phase. It should broaden public ownership, address the social contract, constitution and reconciliation, and help constitute a legitimate post-war order. It cannot substitute for negotiations that stop the fighting.

This clarity also reduces the false contest between an “internal” and an “external” dialogue. Any initiative, whether convened inside Sudan or elsewhere, should subscribe to the same political destination, sequence, standards and safeguards. Different spaces can then reinforce one strategy instead of becoming rival claims that polarize Sudanese and fragment mediation.

Humanitarian and security negotiations must proceed in parallel. Belligerents must deliver restraint, access, cessation and compliance. But arms must not confer ownership of Sudan’s constitutional future. The tracks must be connected without militarizing the civilian process.

A Patriotic Compact to Save Sudan

International cooperation can create space, alter incentives and support a credible process. It cannot manufacture the Sudanese will required to save the country.

Sudanese political and civic formations, professional associations, resistance communities, women, youth, displaced people, refugees and advocates around the General Assembly should converge around a minimum patriotic compact: one Sudan; an end to the war; no political future founded on military victory; preservation of national institutions without permanent belligerent control; equal citizenship; civilian political centrality; justice; and a Sudanese-owned constitutional path.

That compact would be the Sudanese contribution to a common strategy. The mediators should answer it with consistency, transparency and protection and centrality of independent civilian agency. Neither side should wait for perfect conditions or flawless performance by the other. The governing ethic must be reciprocal responsibility: what more can each do, now, to reverse the war dynamics?

This does not require Sudanese to erase differences, equate the belligerents or abandon justice. Negotiation is not absolution. It is the arena in which war can be ended, accountability pursued, one professional national army built and legitimate authority reconstructed. The most urgent divide is between a war that is unmaking the country and the recovery of politics as the means by which Sudanese can disagree without destroying Sudan. Anti-war politics is patriotism in its most practical form.

Joint Quad-Quintet action would be modest against the scale of regional crisis, but its significance could extend beyond Sudan. It would show that states divided by larger confrontations can still cooperate to prevent another country from being consumed by them, restoring a measure of confidence in African, Arab and international peacemaking.

The final responsibility belongs to the Sudanese. Only Sudanese can save Sudan; others can help. There can be no meaningful victor if the country itself is vanquished. On 24 September, the Quad and Quintet should leave with a common programme, named responsibilities and a review date. Sudanese political and civic formations should answer with a minimum patriotic platform and the determination to rebuild a national political arena stronger than the armed camps that displaced it.

The opportunity is real, but it will not remain open indefinitely. Before Sudan disappears from the world’s agenda – and before war makes Sudan disappear into rival territories – its people and their international partners must act together. Sudan is still possible.

Abdul Mohammed

While the world’s attention is fixed on the war with Iran and its widening fronts across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa is being drawn into the same strategic theatre. The Red Sea no longer separates two regions. It connects their wars.

Since the United States and Israel began their war with Iran in late February 2026, pressure on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has increased the strategic importance of the southern Red Sea. The Houthis have turned that vulnerability into leverage at Bab el-Mandeb. Their control of Mocha, Mayun Island and the Hanish islands has strengthened their position. Missiles, drones, selective attacks and the uncertainty they create can redirect ships, raise insurance costs and convert geography into political power.

The consequences reach the African shore. Djibouti lies close to Houthi-held positions while hosting foreign bases. As fighting between Iran-backed Houthi forces and Saudi-backed government forces intensifies during the past week, it is reported that some 3000 people fleeing Yemen crossed the sea into Djibouti, prompting the authorities in Djibouti to call for international help.

Eritrea’s coast and islands have gained strategic value. Somalia’s trade routes are exposed, Somaliland’s recognition campaign is becoming entangled with offers of security access, and Sudan’s war draws support through the same maritime space. Ethiopia’s search for reliable sea access now unfolds amid military blocs and chokepoint politics.

The Tilly inversion

Charles Tilly famously argued that war made the state and the state made war. In early modern Europe, violent competition compelled rulers to raise taxes, build administrations, organise armies and concentrate authority. In the contemporary Horn, the conditions are almost the reverse.

International recognition can preserve the juridical shell of a state after its institutions fracture. Governments and armed movements obtain weapons, finance and protection from abroad without building durable relationships with citizens. Extraction, illicit commerce and external rents can replace taxation, while drones give actors with little administrative capacity unprecedented destructive reach.

Military survival therefore no longer requires state-building. A government may retain international recognition while losing territorial authority. An armed movement may control populations, trade and territory without accepting the obligations of government. Foreign sponsors can keep both alive. War now makes armed networks, and those networks unmake the state.

State-unmaking is cumulative. Institutions lose people and resources, commanders acquire independent power, and citizens seek protection through communal or militia structures. External insecurity accelerates this fragmentation. Powers seeking ports, bases and strategic depth may deal directly with armed movements, federal entities, local authorities and commercial networks, as well as national governments. Sovereignty survives formally, but its exercise is fragmented.

It is under these conditions that permanent war becomes a reality. It does not require uninterrupted combat in every country. It describes a regional condition in which coercion becomes a normal means of bargaining, wars mutate rather than end, and the institutions needed to make peace weaken with every cycle of violence. States remain on the map while their authority, legitimacy and social foundations steadily erode.

The Red Sea becomes one theatre

The process of the collapse of the Red Sea as a border separating the Horn of Africa and the Gulf has been underway at least for the past decade. The Iran war has exposed the strategic unity of the Gulf, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Pressure at Hormuz and Houthi leverage at Bab el-Mandeb operate as paired chokepoints. A conflict centred on Iran can therefore affect food and fuel prices in the Horn, Gulf energy exports, Suez Canal revenues and the security calculations of every coastal state.

Gulf states are diversifying partnerships while retaining American protection and reopening channels with Iran. Their search for security, not just military but other forms, has reached and will increasingly reach across the Red Sea.

Indeed, alliance formation and competition for influence and control of ports and trade routes are intensifying. Ports and military facilities now sit at the centre of this contest. Djibouti, Berbera, Bosaso, Assab and Port Sudan attract interest as commercial gateways and nodes in wider security networks.

Investment can bring genuine benefit. But opaque agreements and exclusive military arrangements can turn domestic disputes into international commitments and strengthen subnational actors at the expense of national settlements.

For Horn governments, the lesson is sobering. Imported alliance systems cannot provide durable security. An external patron may offer weapons, finance or diplomatic support, but its commitments change with its interests. A partnership designed to solve one immediate problem can import a much larger geopolitical confrontation. Strategic autonomy requires diversified relationships, not dependence on a different guarantor.

The economic asymmetry is equally important. Gulf states possess sovereign funds, storage capacity and infrastructure; most Horn states have far smaller buffers. Disrupted shipping, higher food and energy costs, falling port revenues or attacks on infrastructure can quickly become fiscal, humanitarian and political crises. Economic disruption in a wealthy state may become institutional disintegration in a fragile one.

Militarisation compounds the danger. Governments facing drones, proxy forces and maritime insecurity will devote scarce resources to weapons, interceptors and regime protection. Public institutions, services and economic transformation receive less. The prioritisation of military survival does not merely damage the state; it changes what the state is for.

It is also notable that the security geography on both sides of the Red Sea has integrated faster than diplomacy.

Three fronts of state unmaking

Sudan remains the clearest case. The war that began in April 2023 as a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has become a conflict among broad and unstable military coalitions. The army’s recovery of Khartoum in March 2025 restored confidence and parts of the national administration. But the RSF retains strategic depth across much of Darfur and has built parallel arrangements. Militias, former rebels, foreign fighters and war economies have acquired interests of their own.

Each principal belligerent can prevent the other from ruling Sudan, but neither has demonstrated a credible path to reunifying and legitimately governing it by force. The longer the war continues, the more de facto partition acquires institutions, revenues, external relationships and political constituencies. Sudan may retain one flag and one seat at the United Nations while being unmade from within.

The Iran war has increased the value of coastlines, ports, islands and airfields. A matter for negotiation through trade and transit can become a military security dilemma. In this context, a second danger lies in renewed confrontation among Ethiopia, Eritrea and forces in Tigray. The Pretoria agreement ended the main fighting but did not settle the underlying disputes. Ethiopia’s demand for dependable sea access has become entangled with wider regional alignments and rising insecurity, gravely affecting Ethiopia’s economic security.

If the current trajectory is not reversed and war is not averted, the consequences would be more devastating than any of the wars of the past three decades. Drones, proxies and external sponsors would accelerate escalation. Even victory would leave devastated borderlands, deeper division and greater foreign dependence, unmaking political order on both sides.

Somalia presents a different form of the same crisis. Its state-making process remains incomplete but has produced consolidating federal institutions and a political order sustained by continuous negotiation. That progress is threatened by tensions between the federal government and member states, Al-Shabaab, and the growing practice of external powers cultivating separate relationships with Somali authorities.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December 2025 changed the regional setting. Somaliland’s claim deserves consideration on its history, the will of its people, its record of governance and a negotiated relationship with Somalia. If recognition becomes a transaction for military access or alignment in the Iran war, however, Somaliland risks entering international politics as a forward security platform before it enters as an autonomous political actor. Somalia is weakened by the same logic. State-making cannot be outsourced to competing alliances without producing dependency and further fragmentation.

Peacemaking as statecraft

The region’s mediation machinery has not kept pace with this transformation. The African Union and IGAD confront fragmented wars, divided members and external actors that are simultaneously mediators, patrons and participants. Both are way behind the curve and have yet to adapt their tools and assumptions, including on peacemaking and mediation, to these profound transformations.

Mediation must therefore be treated as statecraft, not as a succession of meetings. It requires sustained political leadership, strong analysis, knowledge of the parties and their social bases, and leverage over the external networks that sustain violence. In other words, mediation today requires ‘sustained political architecture’. Arms transfers, foreign fighters, financial networks and security agreements must become subjects of mediation rather than matters treated as external to it.

African institutions need a standing strategic capacity that connects mediation, civilian protection, conflict economics, and regional diplomacy. It should be financed predictably, including through the African Peace Fund.

The AU and regional bodies like IGAD also need a common framework for the Horn and Red Sea, leveraging and building on existing regional bodies such as IGAD and the Gulf Cooperation Council. This should not be another military bloc. It should support shared threat assessment, political consultation, transparent rules for ports and bases, infrastructure protection, preventive diplomacy and collective engagement with outside powers. Acting together will not eliminate national differences, but it can stop those differences from being organised by rival external alliances.

Rebuilding the state against permanent war

Peacemaking, as a condition for regional and continental integration, must recover state-making as its objective. Ending combat is indispensable, but a ceasefire alone does not recreate sustainable peace and public authority. Political settlements must rebuild constitutional legitimacy, accountable finance, professional institutions and local systems able to provide security and services without militia permission.

Domestic settlement is also the foundation of strategic autonomy. States divided within are easily penetrated from outside. Stronger AU and IGAD also advance strategic autonomy, providing a shield from external pressure and repurposing mediation for changing conditions.

Dawit Toga, Visiting Sr. Research Fellow, African Leadership Centre, King’s College London

The wave of popular uprisings that swept across most of North Africa in early 2011 marked a major turning point in the political trajectory of the region. Apart from its immediate impact of bringing down governments, it carried huge repercussions for peace and security in Africa and the African Union’s governance and security architectures.

After the popular uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt, Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule, became the next domino to crumble. What began as peaceful protests in Benghazi on 15 February 2011 rapidly escalated into an armed rebellion, catalysed by the National Transitional Council (NTC) and subsequently enabled by NATO’s military intervention under UN Security Council Resolution 1973. By October 2011, Gaddafi’s capture and extrajudicial execution marked the regime’s effective overthrow in less than eight months.

More than a decade later, the continent continues to grapple with both the conflict in Libya and its transnational fallout: arms proliferation across the Sahel has exacerbated conflicts and enabled terrorist networks, while the resultant instability of the wider region has generated heightened levels of refugees, asylum seekers and migrant flows across the Mediterranean. The Libyan case thus represents not merely a historical episode but an ongoing regional crisis whose reverberations continue to shape African security governance.

Despite the fact that the AU’s peacemaking initiative had a limited temporal scope, the trials and tribulations of that mediation effort in Libya offer useful insights and lessons on the factors that shape the deployment and relative success of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) mechanisms as well as on the AU’s role in the aftermath of such initiatives. Clearly, that episode of AU’s mediation requires a much bigger examination and this short article seeks to contribute to that by discussing the fundamental questions of the policy challenges that the Libyan crisis posed to the APSA, the policy approach that the AU took on the crisis and the peacemaking instrument that the AU deployed in pursuit of the policy approach it adopted and the various institutional and geopolitical factors that eventually derailed AU’s peace efforts.

Overview of AU’s Mediation Efforts in Libya

The AU’s engagement unfolded amid rapidly changing events and competing international initiatives. Initially, it started as and looked like the popular uprisings sweeping through North Africa, with escalating incidents of violent confrontations. On 23 February 2011, the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) convened its 261^st session, expressing deep concern and strongly condemning ‘the indiscriminate and excessive use of force and lethal weapons against peaceful protesters’, while urging restraint and the need for preservation of the territorial integrity and unity of Libya.

Unlike the popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt, the protests and the push for ending Muammar Gaddafi’s decades of rule did not remain peaceful for long. It quickly descended into armed insurrection, thereby crossing into the realm of armed conflict. This prompted the PSC to convene another and this time around, a landmark session on 10 March 2011.  It outlined a policy approach for diplomatic resolution with four pillars: cessation of hostilities, access to humanitarian assistance, protection of foreign nationals, particularly those of African origin and adoption and implementation of political reforms. To lead the diplomatic process, the PSC established the AU Ad Hoc High-level Committee on Libya mandated to ‘facilitate an inclusive dialogue among the Libyan parties.’

While many in the UN, EU and Arab League expressed the view that there was imminent danger of commission of serious atrocities in Libya and moved for intervention, the AU neither shared those views nor called for intervention in Libya. Most members of the PSC were not convinced that there was substantial evidence to support the fear of mass atrocities in Libya, despite Gaddafi’s rhetorical posturing. As such, the PSC opted for dialogue and peacemaking as the avenue for the resolution of the conflict in Libya.

The critical turning point came with UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011 that purported to enforce the responsibility to protect (R2P). The resolution, passed with support from the three AU members under heavy Western pressure, authorised ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians, established a no-fly zone, and mandated coalitions of the willing to enforce the no-fly zone, paving the way for NATO intervention that commenced on 19 March.

This decision came in clear collusion with the AU approach. The resolution, adopted just a week after the AU PSC meeting, effectively marginalised diplomatic efforts and established a framework prioritszing military intervention over the political dialogue for which the AU put in place a mechanism.

Solomon Ayele Dersso, PhD, Founding Director, Amani Africa

When it kicks off today in Luanda, Angola, the major question that the extraordinary summit of the African Union (AU) on strengthening conflict prevention and resolution faces is whether it will mark a break from the past or be yet another missed opportunity.

Given the scale, nature and proliferation of conflicts across different parts of the continent, this is not a moment for a business-as-usual summitry. And, the challenge for this summit is not about adopting new decisions or a wish list of new activities to be undertaken over the course of the next few years or making marginal institutional refinements. Indeed, in adopting Assembly/AU/Dec.949(XXXIX) for holding an extraordinary summit in Luanda on the strengthening of mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution in Africa, the 39^th ordinary session of the AU Assembly in February 2026 committed ‘to concrete, measurable, and time-bound deliverables, rather than a declarative forum.’

The question for this summit is accordingly whether African leaders gathering in Luanda will adopt decisive actions for exercising full responsibility and use all the diplomatic and normative arsenal at the disposal of the AU to arrest the downward spiral in the various conflict situations on the continent. Over the past decade, as a review of the first ten-year implementation of AU’s flagship peace and security agenda of Silencing the Guns revealed, the peace and security conditions and the operation of the African Peace and Security Architecture have come to run into major crises.

The result has been the emergence and entrenchment of a new era of conflicts and insecurity. The continent is witnessing the persistence and expansion of complex armed conflicts, the proliferation of violent extremist groups, recurring unconstitutional changes of government, intensified geopolitical competition, and growing humanitarian and climate-related pressures. As pointed out in Amani Africa’s signature publication accompanying the 39^th AU summit, ‘the nature and scale of conflicts in some of the affected regions is such that they pose an existential threat to the affected peoples and states.’ Indeed, the state of conflicts and insecurity is such that it necessitates the mobilisation of the kind of emergency collective action that AU member states mustered in responding to the COVID19 pandemic.

In this context, the decisiveness that member states need to summon in Luanda should lead to tasking the AU Commission Chairperson to institute an emergency situation room dedicated to the major conflict situations in Sudan, the Sahel, DRC and South Sudan under the direct responsibility of the Chairperson, supported by the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security. In the same way, the AU mobilized collective action in response to COVID 19, such an emergency situation room will operate as an instrument for mobilising sustained and robust conflict resolution and peace restoring efforts, implementing politically and operationally sound conflict resolution strategy dedicated and tailored to each of the major conflict situations on the continent and building and nurturing the level of consensus and support from member states and regional and international actors required for effective collective action.

Such an approach will also help the AU to break from the inertia of the practice of the past years during which the AU increasingly lost influence. In several major crises across the continent, the AU has struggled to show leadership (by being the first to act and proactively, by articulating compelling political strategy, and by mobilising consensus among its member states around and support for such a strategy) in preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and mediation processes. APSA’s conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms did not fare well in respect of any of the major conflict situations. With the AU unable to seize the space for peace initiatives, various external actors have come to assume more prominent political and diplomatic roles. As documented in a report Re-energising Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa: a Quest to Salvage the APSA?, the APSA has struggled to respond to mounting challenges, with the leadership on Libya, Sudan and the DRC–Rwanda file passing to actors outside the continent while the AU plays, at best, a marginal role of legitimising such processes.

The lessons from the genesis and the first decade of the APSA also remain instructive for ending AU’s years of declining influence. The APSA and its implementation between early 2000 and early 2010s presented Africa with the platform that catalysed the journey towards the realisation of the long quest for pax Africana. A combination of factors including the provision of leadership by a group of leaders shaped by and seeking to overcome the horrors of war, not least of all the genocide against the Tutsi’s in Rwanda, renewed interest in and mobilization for Pan-Africanism and collective responsibility and a supportive international multilateral environment were critical both for the development of the APSA and its nearly a decade of relatively more successful efforts that contributed to reduction of conflicts in Africa.

Today, the changing international situation not only aggravates but also accelerates the conflict dynamics on the continent. Developments of the past few years show that the multilateral system is in deep crisis. Geopolitical tensions are deepening. Force is becoming a leading instrument in pursuing national interest. Breaches of fundamental rules of international law, including the UN Charter, have become recurrent. As documented in a policy brief on the 75^th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, what is troublesome is the fact not only that there is widespread violation of multilateral norms including IHL and the Geneva Conventions but also that ‘these violations are occurring without any fear of accountability, thus with impunity, and are often cloaked in attempts to justify or legitimise them.’

In such times of global disorder, responsibility primarily lies with and should be assumed by the continental body and its member states. The exercise of such responsibility, with resolute commitment, will be measured not just by the convening of meetings but by whether the force of decisions and the speed of follow-through would match the gravity and urgency of the emergency-level state of the peace and security situation on the continent. Unless African leaders gathered in Luanda rise to the moment, reassert the political purpose of the APSA, and reaffirm conflict prevention and resolution as an exercise in consequence by shaping the trajectory of conflicts through effective and sustained emergency peace restoring measures rather than episodic meetings and ceremonial processes, the AU may continue to float adrift as a new era of conflicts entrench and it concedes more space for external actors.

The last thing the continent needs from the Luanda summit is decisions that lead to ceremonial meetings and the establishment of processes bereft of political weight and consequences. As a special research report published ahead of the Luanda summit rightly pointed out, ‘[t]he continent should avoid becoming absorbed in prolonged consultations, expert processes and successive meetings while conflicts continue to inflict immense suffering on the ground. Africa cannot afford such a disconnect.’