Tomorrow (17 March), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1336^th meeting to receive a briefing from the AU Panel of the Wise on its activities in Africa.

Following opening remarks by Mahlaba Ali Mamba, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Eswatini to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for March 2026, Bankole Adeoye, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), is expected to make an introductory statement. Domitien Ndayizeye, Chair of the Panel of the Wise, is expected to brief the Council.

The Panel of the Wise, one of the key pillars of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) for preventive diplomacy, last briefed the PSC in March 2025. Although the PSC’s 665^th session in March 2017 envisaged quarterly briefings by the Panel, engagement between the two has in practice remained largely annual. During its 1264^th session of 11 March 2025, the Panel reaffirmed the Panel’s central role in conflict prevention, mediation and peacebuilding. That session drew particular attention to tensions in South Sudan and underscored the need for strengthening both resources and the AU presence on the ground. The Council also highlighted growing expectations on the Panel, including responding rapidly to emerging crises, sustaining engagement in fragile transitions and working more closely with partners. To support this, the PSC directed the AU Commission to strengthen early warning analysis for the Panel and undertake joint scenario-building with experts such as NeTT4Peace.

Broadly speaking, three sets of activities are expected to feature during tomorrow’s session. The first relates to the core mandate of the Panel, preventive diplomacy initiatives with respect to risks of eruption of conflicts or relapse into conflict. The second relates to the Panel’s engagement in election-related activities. The final one relates to the activities of the subsidiary bodies of the Panel, such as FemWise.

In terms of preventive diplomacy work of the Panel, the Panel’s missions to South Sudan and Madagascar are expected to receive particular attention.  The Panel’s continued engagement in South Sudan, while not enough to reverse the deteriorating situation, is expected to be of interest to the PSC. Following the PSC’s 1270^th meeting of 31 March 2025, which requested a high-level delegation led by the Panel of the Wise to help ‘de-escalate the tensions, cease-fire, and to mediate between the parties’, the Panel undertook a four-day mission to Juba in early April 2025 and engaged key stakeholders. A major gap was the denial of access to Riek Machar. The Panel also convened a consultative roundtable with South Sudanese civil society in Addis Ababa in June 2025. The Panel reportedly later recommended the appointment of an AU High-Level Representative, and at its 1297^th session, the PSC called on the Commission Chairperson to ‘urgently appoint’ one, although this had yet to be acted upon. The Council renewed the same appeal at its 1326^th meeting on 23 January 2026. Tomorrow’s session may therefore allow the Council to assess how this engagement can enable conditions for effective peacemaking, urgently needed for arresting South Sudan’s relapse back to full civil war currently underway.

Another area likely to feature in the briefing concerns the Panel’s engagement in Madagascar. It is to be recalled that at its 1306^th emergency meeting of 15 October 2025, the PSC suspended Madagascar following the unconstitutional change of government. In the same session, the Council reiterated ‘its recommendation to the Chairperson of the Union, with the support of the Chairperson of the AU Commission, to immediately dispatch a high-level delegation to Madagascar to engage with the stakeholders concerned’. This followed a similar recommendation made by the PSC at its 1305^th meeting two days earlier. On 16 October 2025, the AU Commission announced the deployment of a high-level delegation to Madagascar, coordinated with the Southern African Development Community (SADC), aimed at engaging state authorities, political parties, civil society and youth representatives in support of a Malagasy-owned, inclusive and civilian-led national dialogue geared toward restoring constitutional democratic governance.

The delegation to Madagascar, led by Domitien Ndayizeye and undertaken alongside AU Special Envoy Mohamed Idris Farah, visited Antananarivo from 7 to 11 November 2025. During the visit, the AU delegation consulted transitional leader Michael Randrianirina, Prime Minister Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo, Foreign Minister Christine Razanamahasoa and other stakeholders. The PSC’s 1313^th  meeting of 20 November 2025 received briefings from both Ndayizeye and Farah. Tomorrow’s session may therefore provide the PSC with an opportunity to take stock of the Panel’s engagement in Madagascar and to encourage sustained coordination between the Panel, the AU Special Envoy and SADC in support of mediation and an inclusive path toward restoring constitutional order.

In electoral contexts, the Panel continued with efforts to promote peaceful electoral conditions in countries involved in electoral processes. Accordingly, it undertook missions, among others, to Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Malawi and Tanzania through pre-election assessments, dialogue with political actors and institutions, confidence-building measures and post-electoral follow-up, helping to promote restraint, sustain political dialogue and reinforce trust in constitutional and electoral processes. As events in Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania illustrated, these efforts did not change electoral instability and violence. Tomorrow’s session would afford both the PSC and the Panel the opportunity to reflect on ways of improving the working methods and approaches to the Panel’s engagement in elections to make it more impactful than performative.

Another activity likely to receive attention is the Panel’s engagement in the Sahel and West Africa. On 15–16 December 2025, the Panel of the Wise convened a two-day consultative roundtable with eminent religious and traditional leaders in support of preventive diplomacy, dialogue, peace and social cohesion. The discussions highlighted the role of these leaders in promoting peaceful coexistence and stressed inclusive, community-based approaches involving women, youth, faith leaders, traditional authorities and state institutions, while also exploring more sustained mechanisms for collaboration with the PSC and the AU Commission.

Tomorrow’s session is also expected to review the work of the Panel’s subsidiary mechanisms and their contribution to AU preventive diplomacy. A key milestone for FemWise-Africa was the onboarding of its second continental cohort of members, conducted in collaboration with RECs/RMs and NeTT4Peace, through which 50 experienced women mediators were selected, expanding the pool available for AU deployment and concluding the Network’s re-conceptualisation to strengthen its support for AU-led mediation. FemWise-Africa also held a reflective meeting in Dakar in December 2025 on lessons from its decentralisation process, generating recommendations on membership, resource mobilisation and practical engagement to strengthen its chapters. Similarly, the AU WiseYouth Network held the first African Youth Consultation on Mediation, Preventive Diplomacy and Peace Processes in Kigali from 30 September to 2 October 2025, bringing together youth mediators, policymakers and emerging leaders to reflect on youth participation, share best practices and develop recommendations for expanding the role of youth in peace processes. Together, these efforts deepened the integration of gender-sensitive and youth-sensitive perspectives into AU preventive diplomacy and reflected closer coordination between the Panel and its subsidiary bodies, including through joint deployments to Gabon, Malawi, Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire.

Another development that may feature in tomorrow’s briefing is the participation of members of the Panel, together with AU Special Envoys and High Representatives, representatives of regional organisations, and international partners, in the 16^th High-Level Retreat on the Promotion of Peace, Security and Stability in Africa held in Aswan, Egypt, from 21 to 22 October 2025 under the theme ‘Reframing AU Mediation – Consolidating African Leadership and Ownership’. The retreat reflected on ways of strengthening Africa-led mediation and preventive diplomacy and underscored the importance of more inclusive peace processes that engage women, youth, traditional and religious leaders, and local communities as indispensable actors in building sustainable peace and reconciliation.

In addition, on 19 December 2025, the Panel was hosted by Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, Chairperson of the AU Commission, at AU Headquarters for discussions on preventive diplomacy strategies, ongoing reforms within the peace and security architecture and the changing security threats facing the continent. During that meeting, the Chairperson expressed appreciation for the Panel’s proactive engagement in conflict prevention and mediation and reiterated the Commission’s commitment to supporting the Panel’s role in advancing African-owned and African-led peace initiatives.

The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to welcome the Panel’s preventive diplomacy missions, particularly in South Sudan and Madagascar, as well as its missions to countries in transition and its electoral preventive diplomacy efforts. It may urge efforts for enhanced integration of FemWise and AU WiseYouth network into the various preventive diplomacy initiatives and peacemaking processes. The PSC may also call for an assessment of the efficacy of the working methods and approaches of the Panel, as well as the institutional and working arrangements of the Panel, as a critical measure for reinvigorating the role of the Panel in view of the escalation and complexity of insecurity and conflicts. It may stress the need to reinvigorate early warning and conflict prevention through closer collaboration with the Panel, while also calling for stronger coordination in supporting complex transitions, sustaining peace in fragile contexts and enabling early action to de-escalate emerging crises. The Council may further emphasise the need for better resourcing and more systematic follow-up to Panel missions, while encouraging closer cooperation with RECs/RMs and the UN, as well as other AU good offices. It may also welcome the first African Youth Consultation on Mediation, Preventive Diplomacy and Peace Processes held in Kigali from 30 September to 2 October 2025.

Tomorrow (9 March), the African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1334th open session on Women’s Leadership in Addressing Emerging Threats to Peace and Security: Artificial Intelligence and Technology-Facilitated Violence. The meeting will take place virtually and forms part of the Council’s continued engagement with the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda across Africa.

Following opening remarks by Almon Mahlaba Mamba, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Eswatini to the African Union and Chairperson of the PSC for March 2026, Bankole Adeoye, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, will deliver introductory remarks. Liberata Mulamula, Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the AU Commission on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), is also expected to make a presentation to the Council, followed by a statement from Justice Effie Ewuor, Co-Chair of FemWise-Africa, and a presentation by the Representative of UN Women. Additionally, statements are also expected from PSC Members, AU Member States, and Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs).

The 1334^th session continues the PSC’s institutionalised engagement with the WPS agenda, formalised as a standing item at its 223^rd meeting in March 2010. Since institutionalising the WPS agenda, the PSC has convened 28 dedicated sessions, with this 1334th meeting extending its thematic scope to women’s leadership against AI and technology-facilitated violence. While the Council has made evident progress through thematic expansions, encompassing women’s roles in preventing violent extremism, displacement/refugee protection, media accountability, economic integration, and WPS linkages to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), these advances remain ad hoc and inconsistent.

The session convenes amid a sharply deteriorating continental peace and security landscape, marked by protracted conflicts in Sudan, eastern DRC, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa, where women’s leadership proves indispensable for tackling both AI-driven threats and technology-facilitated violence. Protracted conflicts in the Sahel, Great Lakes region, and Horn of Africa, exacerbated by Sudan’s war, renewed eastern DRC violence, and Somalia’s instability, continue fueling mass displacement, humanitarian crises, and civilian atrocities. Women and girls suffer disproportionately, facing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), early/forced marriage, economic exclusion, and barriers to peace processes. In many contexts, sexual violence serves as a deliberate war tactic, while shrinking civic space stifles activism; now, AI-amplified disinformation, cyber-harassment, and online gender-based violence compound these risks, demanding women-led strategies for digital resilience and accountability.

This backdrop renders tomorrow’s PSC session pivotal, as the rapid proliferation of digital technologies and AI is reshaping political communication, conflict dynamics, and social interactions across Africa. Artificial intelligence and emerging digital technologies are also expected to become a major driver of economic transformation on the continent, with projections indicating that they could add around $1.5 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2030. While offering avenues for economic growth, innovation, and governance gains, including the emergence of women-led digital peacebuilding tools, these technological advancements are also generating new risks. In particular, they have enabled forms of technology-facilitated violence that disproportionately target women in public life, including peacebuilders, journalists, activists, and leaders.

Tomorrow’s session offers an opportunity for the PSC to rigorously assess how AI-driven threats and digital technology violence are intensifying conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), eroding civic space, and systematically targeting women peacebuilders, journalists, activists, and leaders amid governance erosion and escalating crises on the continent. A 2024 UNU-Interpeace report on sub-Saharan Africa reveals AI-generated deep fakes and botnets fueling ethnic polarization and undermining peacekeeping efforts in the DRC, while a 2025 study across 11 countries documents devastating cases: Ethiopia’s Mayor endured deep fake pornography viewed 562,000 times (90% believed it is real), and Cameroon’s Brenda Biya faced coordinated harassment reaching 8.9 million via 92 identical posts evading moderation through ‘spamouflage.’ Binding Hook’s 2026 analysis escalates the urgency, showing generative AI’s low-cost scalability in gendered disinformation, exemplified by election deep fakes targeting women politicians in Ghana, Namibia, and Kenya that inflict reputational harm, psychological trauma, and civic exclusion by exploiting patriarchal norms. These platform-amplified attacks, where outrage boosts engagement 15-20%. In highlighting these challenges, the PSC may explore the gaps that exist in the legal and policy instruments, including the AU Continental Results Framework (CRF), such as missing tech-threat indicators and the need for digital impact assessments in PSOs and WPS-tech reports, and harmonised monitoring to safeguard women’s roles in peace processes.

Beyond the digital information environment, the Council may consider how AI-enabled technologies are also reshaping the conduct of warfare itself. Emerging battlefield technologies also highlight the growing intersection between AI and the changing nature of warfare on the continent. Recent analysis, including Amani Africa’s annual review on emerging weapons trends, points to the rapid proliferation of drones as a new ‘weapon of choice’ in several African conflicts. In contexts such as Sudan, their use has had devastating consequences for civilians, particularly in urban areas, with women and girls often bearing disproportionate impacts through civilian deaths, injury, displacement, loss of livelihoods, and heightened insecurity. These developments underscore the urgent need for stronger regulatory and accountability mechanisms governing AI-enabled and algorithm-assisted weapons systems to prevent further civilian harm and deepening gendered vulnerabilities in conflict settings.

The AU has forged a robust normative architecture to tackle AI-driven threats within the WPS agenda. Key instruments include the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030), which promotes inclusive digital ecosystems but lacks WPS-specific mandates; the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (Malabo Convention), establishing data safeguards yet ratified by only 16 states as of 2026; and the PSC’s recent call for a continental AI-governance-peace advisory mechanism. Complementing these, WPS pillars draw strength from the Maputo Protocol (2003) and the landmark AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (2025), which explicitly criminalises ‘cyber violence’, encompassing deep fakes, doxing, and algorithmic harassment, while the Continental Results Framework (CRF) drives gender-disaggregated monitoring. Yet weak domestication, chronic underfunding, and missing tech-threat indicators hobble enforcement.

Against this backdrop, tomorrow’s 1334^th session may be used by the PSC to strategically operationalise these frameworks amid AI’s profound disruption of conflict dynamics, governance, and gender equality. The PSC may probe tech-WPS intersections, such as disinformation undermining women mediators in Sudan/DRC, and champion targeted measures: embedding cyber violence indicators in CRF/NAPs; accelerating Malabo ratifications; empowering the AI advisory mechanism with women leaders; and mandating gender audits of peace operations’ digital protocols. This decisive pivot could convert aspirations into accountable action, fortifying women’s leadership in tech-resilient peace architectures.

The Council may also consider how to strengthen coherence between national and continental frameworks by encouraging the alignment of the growing number of National Action Plans (NAPs) on Women, Peace and Security, now adopted by more than 37 AU Member States, with emerging digital threat assessments and technology governance initiatives. Integrating considerations such as AI-driven risks, cyber harassment, and technology-enabled gender-based violence into these NAPs could support more comprehensive prevention strategies while enabling Member States and Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms to better anticipate the intersection between technological change and existing conflict drivers. In this context, the PSC may further emphasise the importance of promoting women’s participation in digital governance and technology policy spaces. As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies increasingly shape governance and security systems, ensuring that women contribute to policy design and decision-making processes will be essential for preventing technological innovation from reinforcing existing gender inequalities and for advancing more inclusive, gender-responsive peacebuilding approaches.

The session also offers the PSC a critical opportunity to assess progress in women-led innovations addressing emerging AI-driven security risks, including AI-enabled early-warning systems and gender-responsive digital mediation platforms. While African women demonstrate strong potential in the technology ecosystem, accounting for 47% of STEM graduates globally, the highest share worldwide, their participation sharply declines in the technology workforce, where they constitute only 23–30% of professionals in the tech sector. Moreover, structural barriers continue to limit access to the digital ecosystem: only about 31–32% of women in Africa use the internet compared to 42–43% of men, significantly constraining women’s ability to develop digital and AI-related skills and to contribute to technological governance and innovation.

It is therefore expected that the Council may use the session to evaluate how initiatives such as women-focused AI training and entrepreneurship programmes, such as those supporting over 100 African women entrepreneurs trained in data science, machine learning, and AI innovation through UNESCO-supported initiatives, can be scaled to strengthen women’s leadership in digital peacebuilding. At the same time, the PSC could address persistent structural barriers, including women’s underrepresentation in technology policy spaces and limited access to investment for women-led tech ventures. Building on AU’s gender-parity commitments, the Council may prioritise targeted capacity-building in cybersecurity, AI governance, and digital peacebuilding, while encouraging Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs) to deploy women experts and establish women-led digital security task forces capable of developing scalable, Africa-rooted responses to AI-enabled threats.

Beyond the rapidly expanding digital domain, the session may also situate AI- and technology-facilitated violence within the broader spectrum of structural and emerging threats affecting women and girls across Africa. These include climate-related insecurity, violent extremism, protracted displacement, and deepening economic marginalisation, issues highlighted during the 2025 Cotonou Meeting on Women, Peace and Security as key drivers of gendered insecurity on the continent. Economic governance frameworks may also feature in this discussion, particularly where digital transformation intersects with gender inequality. For instance, while continental initiatives such as the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol aim to expand digital markets and cross-border trade, their largely gender-neutral design risks overlooking structural constraints that continue to limit women-owned MSMEs, including restricted access to finance, high transaction costs, and persistent digital connectivity gaps. In this regard, the session may provide an opportunity for the PSC to deliberate on how gender-responsive approaches can be more systematically mainstreamed across the tools of the AU peace and security architecture, including early warning mechanisms and regular Council briefings, while ensuring that responses to emerging technological threats are linked to broader socio-economic and governance reforms.

The expected outcome of tomorrow’s session is a communiqué. The Council may call for stronger measures to address the growing risks posed by artificial intelligence and technology-facilitated violence within the framework of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. In this regard, the PSC may urge Member States to integrate digital threats, including AI-driven disinformation, deep fakes, and online gender-based violence, into National Action Plans on WPS and to align these frameworks with continental instruments and emerging technology governance initiatives. The Council may also encourage accelerated ratification and domestication of the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection and call for the inclusion of indicators on technology-facilitated violence within the African Union Continental Results Framework on Women, Peace and Security to strengthen monitoring and accountability. The PSC may further underscore the importance of promoting women’s leadership in digital governance and AI policy processes, including through the expansion of women-led innovation and mediation networks such as FemWise-Africa, while encouraging Member States, Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms and the African Union Commission to invest in digital literacy, cybersecurity capacity-building and women-led technological solutions for early warning, conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

Tomorrow (19 February), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene an open session on the ‘Nexus between Climate Change, Peace, and Security in Africa.’

The session commences with opening remarks by Obeida A. El Dandarawy, Permanent Representative of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for February. This is followed by an introductory remark from the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye. A presentation by Moses Vilakati, AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment may also feature. In addition, statements are expected from AU Member States, representatives of the Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs), and representatives of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU).

This meeting builds on the PSC’s long-standing engagement with the climate-security nexus since its 585^th session in March 2016, through which the Council committed to holding annual deliberations on climate change and peace and security. In the past two years, the PSC has gone further, dedicating two sessions to the theme each year. This will mark the PSC’s 18^th  such session, including its 1301^st Session(September 2025) and 1263^rd Session(March 2025), both of which reaffirmed climate change as a risk multiplier that exacerbates political, socio-economic, and governance vulnerabilities, rather than a direct conflict trigger. Quantifying this effect, recent analysis of data from 51 African countries spanning 1960 to 2023 highlights the profound socioeconomic and political risks linked to rising temperatures. In the continent’s poorest nations, a 1°C increase is associated with a 10-percentage-point higher likelihood of exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, sometimes leading to civil conflict, whereas wealthier countries show no comparable vulnerability. Moreover, higher temperatures are linked to slower economic growth, reducing GDP growth rates by up to 4 percentage points in hotter years relative to cooler ones.

These trends are consistent with global scientific assessments, particularly findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which indicate that Africa is warming faster than the global average and is experiencing increasingly frequent and intense extreme climate events, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, and cyclones. Additionally, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reports that climate-related disasters in Africa have increased fivefold over the last 50 years.

The peace and security implications of the combination of political, institutional and development fragilities and tensions on the one hand and this climatic trend are stark. It is this interplay, not climate change in itself, that explains why 12 of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) 16 epicentres of crisis, countries marked by intertwined climate vulnerability, extreme poverty, and armed conflict, are in Africa. This underscores the need to prioritise the factors that perpetuate these vulnerabilities, account for climate impacts, and address climate change through broader policy processes.

Climate stress increasingly intersects with armed conflict, weak governance, livelihood loss and displacement, deepening instability in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and parts of Western, Central and Southern Africa. As of early October 2025, OCHA reports that severe flooding in South Sudan had affected more than 639,000 people across 26 counties, intensifying competition over land and water already strained by drought and deepening post-conflict fragility. These climate-driven livelihood losses are fueling intercommunal violence and the growth of armed rivalries, reinforcing cycles of insecurity amid rising political tensions among rival political forces in the country.

Yet the relationship between climate and security is not one-directional. War and conflicts, as well as political instability, also contribute to making climatic stresses much more devastating. Thus, on this flip side, the ongoing conflict in Sudan has intensified the effects of prolonged drought, devastating crops and livestock, and gravely eroding livelihoods and survival capacities.

These continent-wide dynamics are increasingly manifesting in specific national contexts, where climate-induced environmental stress directly amplifies localised tensions and entrenched security threats. For instance, recent research indicates that the degradation of land and water has heightened competition between farming and pastoralist communities in Nigeria, and the research further highlights that ‘the clashes over scarce resources now claim more lives annually than the Boko Haram insurgency itself’. The caveat in this respect is that it is not merely the climate change impact in intensifying competition over resources that makes the ensuing clashes deadlier. What made climate-induced inter-communal clashes over scarce resources deadlier is their combination with the widespread availability of small arms and light weapons.

Against this background, the PSC’s previous sessions, particularly the 1301^st session of September 2025, were notable for situating climate change firmly within a broader climate policy framework anchored in development, justice, and equity, focusing on loss and damage, adaptation financing, and the differentiated vulnerabilities of least-developed and conflict-affected African states. In this regard, the Council is expected to discuss the implications of anchoring climate-security responses within a broader justice-oriented framework. This includes ensuring effective implementation of COP29 commitments on adaptation, loss and damage, and associated financing.

Another dimension of the climate-security nexus relates to access to climate finance. As shown below, fragile and conflict-affected countries, which are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, have the most need for climate finance. However, their risk profile means that they have the least access to climate finance. It is therefore of particular interest for the PSC to reflect on how access to climate finance can be expanded, paying particular attention to fragile and conflict-affected countries.

Tomorrow’s session is also expected to get an update on the work for the finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security. It is to be recalled that updates provided during the 1301^st session indicated that the CAP is now expected to be concluded ahead of COP31, reflecting the need for input of member states, deeper consultation and alignment with existing AU frameworks, including the Africa Group of Negotiators. The delay also underscored ongoing political sensitivities, but it also highlights the strategic importance of ensuring Member State ownership and coherence across Africa’s climate and peace architectures. Since the last session and the update from Adoye, the draft CAP was presented at a technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya. The technical meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya on 25-27 November 2025 under the title “AU member States Validation Workshop on the Draft Common African Position on the Climate Change, peace and security nexus (CAP-CPS)’ concluded without validating the draft. The outcome statement outlined the five-step process roadmap to finalise the work.

Financing for adaptation is also expected to feature during the session. Despite being among the most climate-vulnerable regions, Africa continues to receive a disproportionately small share of global climate finance; according to the United Nations Development Programme, nearly 90% of climate funding is concentrated in high- and middle-income, high-emitting countries, while fragile states, where climate risks intersect most acutely with conflict and governance challenges, receive the least support. This imbalance is particularly stark in conflict-affected settings, where communities obtain on average only one-third of the per-capita adaptation funding available in non-conflict contexts, and countries facing protracted crises continue to receive lower levels of climate-related Official Development Assistance despite their heightened vulnerability. Against this backdrop, the PSC is likely to revisit the outcome of COP30 in Belém, where nations pledged to triple adaptation funding by 2035, a timetable that many African experts deem too slow given the continent’s acute climate vulnerabilities, and most climate finance remains loan-heavy rather than grant-based, further risking debt stress for African states. The Council is therefore expected to focus on the urgent need to honour existing commitments, reform barriers to accessing climate funds, and acknowledge that the persistent under-financing of adaptation is not merely a development challenge but an escalating driver of fragility, fiscal stress, and long-term peace and security risks across Africa that is not without global consequences.

Loss and damage is another policy issue of urgency expected to feature during tomorrow’s session. With climate-induced floods, droughts and cyclones causing repeated destruction of infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems, Africa continues to incur billions of dollars in losses annually. The African Development Bank estimates that climate change already costs African economies 2–5% of GDP each year, for some even reaching double digits. The PSC is thus likely to stress the need for accelerated operationalisation and capitalisation of the loss and damage fund in ways that are responsive to African realities.

Operationally, the session is expected to advance discussions on mainstreaming climate considerations into the AU’s peace and security architecture. This includes integrating climate-conflict indicators into early warning systems, strengthening preparedness and disaster risk reduction, and framing adaptation and governance as peacebuilding strategies. Notably, previous PSC sessions have recognised mobility and transhumance as legitimate adaptation strategies, calling for improved cross-border governance and regional cooperation to reduce climate-induced tensions, an approach of particular relevance to the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Building on this evolving operational focus, the PSC is expected to articulate more concrete follow-up measures, including clearer guidance on implementing climate-security risk assessments in situations under its agenda, strengthening coordination between early warning and response mechanisms, and enhancing collaboration with regional actors to translate these policy commitments into practical preventive and resilience-building actions on the ground.

The session may also revisit the PSC’s earlier call for ensuring that climate-peace and security considerations are fully integrated into continental and global climate policy processes, including the work of CAHOSCC and Africa’s engagement in upcoming multilateral forums such as the G20 and COP31. This remains critical for ensuring that Africa’s concerns around the security dimension of climate and the requisite measures to address the security risks of climate are not marginalised in global policy processes that tend to be increasingly dominated by mitigation and market-based approaches.

The outcome of the session is expected to be a communiqué. The PSC is likely to reaffirm its longstanding position that climate change constitutes a risk multiplier that exacerbates existing political, socio-economic and governance vulnerabilities across Africa and is not a direct cause of conflicts. In this regard, the Council is expected to reiterate its call for the expedited finalisation of the Common African Position (CAP) on Climate Change, Peace and Security within this framework and stress the importance of inclusive consultations, strong Member State ownership, and coherence with existing continental frameworks and Africa’s global climate diplomacy. The PSC may also underline that climate-security engagement should complement, rather than substitute, broader climate policy processes and remain anchored in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and Africa’s development priorities. The Council is also expected to call for concrete steps to operationalise the mainstreaming of climate considerations into conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts, including the integration of climate-conflict indicators into the Continental Early Warning System, the development of standardised climate-security risk assessment tools, and stronger coordination between early warning, humanitarian and response mechanisms. In addition, the PSC is expected to express concern over the widening gap between Africa’s climate needs and available financing, and call for scaled-up, predictable and accessible climate finance, particularly in grant form and with particular attention to the needs of fragile and conflict-affected states. PSC may also call for the capitalisation of the loss and damage fund and the adoption of debt suspension clauses when a country is hit by climate-induced disasters. Finally, the PSC is expected to call for enhanced coordination between the AU, Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms, Member States and international partners, and to stress the importance of ensuring that Africa’s climate-security priorities are effectively reflected in global climate negotiations and multilateral processes, including through engagement with continental mechanisms such as the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change.