Coordination between AUCTC-APRM-CISSA-AFRIPOL on Continental Early Warning Systems: Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning Systems

Coordination between AUCTC-APRM-CISSA-AFRIPOL on Continental Early Warning Systems: Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning SystemsDate | 23 August 2026

Tomorrow (24 August), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1364^th meeting to discuss the theme ‘Coordination between the African Union Counter Terrorism Centre (AUCTC) – the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) – the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA) – the African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (AFRIPOL) on Continental Early Warning System (CEWS): Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning System (EWS).’

Following opening remarks by Mohamed Khaled, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and the Chairperson of the PSC for the month of August, Bankole Adeoye, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), will make a statement. The representatives of AUCTC, APRM, CISSA and AFRIPOL are then expected to deliver briefings.

The last time the PSC met on the theme of Early Warning was in December 2025 at its 1320^th meeting. From the communiqué, the PSC, among other things, underlined the need to strengthen the analytical convergence between AUCTC, CISSA, AFRIPOL and the RECs/RMs. The same meeting further saw the PSC reiterating its request to the AU Commission ‘to collaborate with AUCTC, AFRIPOL, CISSA and APRM to introduce and institutionalise a dynamic tool for mapping risks and threats to peace and security in Africa, as adopted by the PSC through its communiqué PSC/PR/COMM.1298 (2025) of 27 August 2025, in order to enable Council to enhance its conflict prevention efforts.’ It is expected that this will be central to the discussions therein. Noteworthy also, the session comes just slightly over a month following PSC Committee of Experts level consultations on the ‘Proposed AU Model on Trigger Mechanism for Early Warning and Early Action,’ held in July 2026. The proposed model ‘seeks to strengthen timely and proportionate AU responses by establishing clear triggers, thresholds and response options to address emerging risks before they escalate into violent conflict.’ It is expected to serve as a decision-support tool for the PSC, connecting early warning analysis with preventive action through existing AU governance and peace and security mechanisms.

The session comes amidst continuing security crises and an ever-evolving security landscape whose scale, complexity and changing character increasingly outpace the capacity of existing early-warning architecture.  The Global Terrorism Index 2026 report recorded 5,582 terrorism deaths across 2,944 incidents in 2025, a 28 per cent fall from the previous year, with the impact of terrorism falling in 81 countries, the highest number of annual improvements since 2021 Sub-Saharan Africa remains the global epicenter, accounting for over half of all terrorism fatalities, with six of the ten most-impacted countries located on the continent: Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, and the DRC. Fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa surpassed 20,000 for the fourth consecutive year, spread across the Sahel, Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, and Mozambique. In the Sahel specifically, JNIM (al-Qaeda-linked) and ISWAP/ISSP (Islamic State-linked) now collectively control more territory than at any point since the 2012 Mali crisis, with JNIM combining guerrilla attacks with governance strategies, providing basic services and arbitration in areas under its control.

With the evolving security landscape, there have also been significant operational shifts. Drone warfare has become a genuine insurgent capability. In Nigeria’s northeast, ISWAP is deploying combat drones in the Lake Chad basin at operational scale for the first time. Amani Africa’s Special Research Report, ‘Towards a New Agenda for Peace and Security in Africa: New Security Threats and the Future of the Peace and Security Council’ highlighted that one of the new security threats in Africa arises from the expansion of the use of emerging technologies. In addition, jihadist groups are no longer content with launching attacks; rather, they now administer territories and control trade routes, with their influence gradually pushing all the way to the Gulf of Guinea. JNIM’s strategy against Mali in 2026 illustrates a shift toward strangulation rather than storming capitals: JNIM formally declared an economic blockade of Bamako in April 2026, exploiting the fact that Mali imports about 95% of its fuel by road, with convoy attacks causing rationing, fuel queues and power shortages. Previously, the AU Commission, CISSA, AFRIPOL and AUCTC, were tasked to ‘thoroughly investigate the scourge of illicit financial flows, highlighting the networks and to report to PSC as soon as possible’ and called for ‘the establishment of a continental working group on illicit financing, which will inter alia, ensure the mapping of hawala/mobile money networks used by extremist terrorist groups and networks and the launch of a cross-border early warning protocol for suspicious transfers linked to convergence zones.’

Institutionally, the AU’s February 2026 Assembly decision called for the full operationalisation of the Continental Security Cartography and directed the AU Commission, together with AUCTC, AFRIPOL, CISSA and APRM, to establish a dynamic and continuously updated risk-mapping tool capable of providing the PSC with ‘a consolidated picture of threats, vulnerabilities, and potential triggers’. It also called for fast-tracking the CEWS–AUCTC Joint Analytical Cell, closer harmonisation of RECs/RMs early-warning tools with CEWS, and development of a draft AU Early Action Guideline that ‘defines triggers, thresholds, and institutionalises response with timelines’ for consideration by the PSC. Taken together, these measures situate the forthcoming validation within a broader effort to move from parallel institutional reporting towards a more integrated continental risk picture and to strengthen the link between early warning and early action. The validation exercise therefore provides an opportunity to assess whether the emerging risk-mapping architecture is being designed as a decision-support mechanism capable of prompting timely preventive action, rather than as another analytical product whose warnings are not systematically translated into response.

The process acquired further operational content at the 1345^th PSC meeting on ‘Transnational Organised Crimes’ held in May 2026. The session saw the AU Commission, AFRIPOL, AUCTC, CISSA and APRM being tasked to ‘finalise by the end of 2026 a matrix of risks and threats to peace and security in Africa as a tool of the Continental Early Warning System.’ It also tasked AFRIPOL, in coordination with the Commission and RECs/RMs, to establish a continental criminal-intelligence mechanism for the ‘continuous mapping, analysis and dissemination of criminal flows, corridors and networks’ and to produce an annual consolidated continental threat assessment. This broadens the scope of continental early warning beyond conventional conflict indicators to include the evolving nexus among terrorism, organised crime, illicit economies and cross-border security threats.

The governance dimension has advanced in parallel. At its 1349^th meeting, the PSC welcomed the APRM’s development of ‘an early warning system dedicated to governance within the APRM’ and its inclusion in the matrix of risks and threats being finalised by relevant AU structures, while urging Member States to integrate APRM assessments into CEWS. The Joint Burayu Declaration similarly called for institutionalised data- and information-sharing so that APRM country findings ‘feed systematically into APSA early warning and mediation planning,’ within the wider coordination involving AUCTC, AFRIPOL and CISSA. This direction was reinforced by the 35^th APRM Forum in February 2026, which called for efforts to ‘position the APRM as an effective early-warning tool for conflict prevention on the continent,’ and by the March engagement between the AUC Deputy Chairperson and APRM leadership, where discussions focused particularly on ‘governance monitoring, early warning and conflict prevention.’ The key question is therefore whether governance indicators will be integrated into a common analytical picture rather than treated as a parallel stream of information.

The most recent 1354^th ministerial session on counter-terrorism held in July 2026 added another specialised layer. Alongside adopting the African Union Continental Strategic Plan of Action on Countering Terrorism in Africa (2026 -2030), the Council called for ‘specific indicators on radicalisation and violent extremism’ to be integrated into CEWS ‘to enable early detection and timely intervention.’ This places terrorism-specific early warning within the implementation of a broader continental counter-terrorism framework. Taken together with parallel efforts on criminal intelligence and governance-related risks, these decisions point to an increasingly ambitious system in which terrorism analysis, criminal intelligence, governance vulnerabilities and broader conflict indicators are expected to inform one continental warning architecture. The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to take note of the briefings by AUCTC, APRM, CISSA and AFRIPOL and may welcome progress towards validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and the APRM Early Warning System. Council may underscore that the validation should support the institutionalisation of a dynamic and continuously updated continental risk-mapping mechanism capable of providing an integrated picture of emerging threats, vulnerabilities and potential triggers. It may further emphasise the need for the validated tools to strengthen analytical convergence among AUCTC, APRM, CISSA, AFRIPOL and CEWS, including through common analytical standards, greater methodological alignment and secure information-sharing arrangements. Building on earlier decisions, the PSC may emphasise the imperative of regular consolidated horizon-scanning briefings covering emerging and escalating risks, indicators requiring preventive action, cross-border contagion dynamics and scenario options requiring Council guidance, while also encouraging systematic circulation of early-warning products to Member States to inform timely responses. It may also call for adequate technical, human and financial resources for the operationalisation, regular updating and sustained use of the tools, and for governance-related risks identified through the APRM EWS, alongside specialised terrorism and organised-crime indicators, to be systematically incorporated into the broader CEWS architecture.