In August, the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria will assume the chairship of the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) (see In the Words of the PSC Chairperson for an overview of Algeria’s chairship). The Provisional Programme of Work (PPoW) for the month envisages nine substantive sessions, a field mission and an Extraordinary AU Summit. All the sessions planned during the month are scheduled to take place at the ambassadorial level. Of the nine sessions, only two will focus on country/conflict-specific situations, while the other seven will address thematic issues, alongside PSC’s meetings with other relevant bodies. In addition to the substantive sessions, the PSC subsidiary bodies – the Committee of Experts (CoE) and the Military Staff Committee (MSC) – are also expected to meet during the month.

The first session of the month, scheduled for 3 August, will be an open session on the theme, ‘Education in Conflict Situation.’ The last time the PSC considered this theme was during Algeria’s Chairship of the PSC in August 2025, during its 1296^th session on 13 August 2025, following the decision of the PSC to have a dedicated session on education in conflict situations on an annual basis at its first session on education held in August 2024, at its 1229^th session, during Botswana’s chairship. It is to be recalled that the 1229^th PSC session decided to institutionalise the ‘Open Session on Inclusive Education in Conflict Situation as an annual event of the Council.’ This year’s session will therefore build on, and is expected to follow up on, the commitments made at the 1229^th meeting which included a call to improve data collection and evidence-based policymaking to address the unique challenges facing education in conflict situations, as well as those from the 1296^th, which tasked the AU Commission ‘to develop a policy on the protection and provision of education services during conflicts on the Continent.’ The 1296^th session also tasked the Commission with issuing ‘periodic Scorecards on the Elimination of Harmful Practices, tracking trends in child marriage and other violations in conflict-affected areas.’ Of importance will also be to follow up on the status of the task of developing a comprehensive and dynamic matrix listing all AU legal frameworks, strategies and initiatives aimed at promoting inclusive education for all, particularly ensuring continuity of education in times of conflict in Africa, and to develop an action plan on activities to be undertaken in this area from 2025 onwards.

The session also comes just a few months after Jainaba Jagne, former Permanent Representative of The Gambia to the AU and former Co-Chair of the Africa Platform on Children Affected by Armed Conflict (AP-CAAC), was appointed as the first-ever AU Special Envoy for Children Affected by Armed Conflict tasked to ensure sustained continental leadership and coordinated follow-up on the CAAC mandate. Indeed, the Special Envoy would be the most suited institutional structure of the AU for following up and advancing the agenda of protection and continuation of education in conflict situations, and the session thus could anchor its engagement on the role of the Envoy.

On 5 August, the PSC will receive its quarterly briefing from the A3 on their activities within the UNSC,  conducted from April to June 2026. This engagement traces back to the Inaugural Meeting of the High-Level Seminar (HLS) on peace and security in Africa held in December 2013 in Algiers, Algeria, in which it mandated the A3 to provide the PSC with quarterly briefings on African issues before the UNSC. The commitment was reaffirmed at the 11^th Oran Process in 2024 and further formalised through the adoption of the Manual on the Modalities for Enhancing Coordination between the PSC and the A3. This was then endorsed at the PSC’s 1289^th session held on 24 July 2025, setting out clear requirements for regular reporting and structured engagement. The 12^th Oran Process, held in December 2025, further urged the PSC and A3 to ‘regularise and institutionalise their interactions at the level of Permanent Representatives, Political Coordinators and Experts on African issues.’

While it has not been held regularly on a quarterly basis, the most recent briefing of the A3 to the PSC was during Council’s 1340^th session held on 20 April 2026, in which it briefed the PSC on its activities in the UNSC during the first quarter of 2026. During that session, the Council reiterated ‘the importance of regular briefings by the A3 to the PSC, on a quarterly basis, and as may be necessary, on African issues under consideration by the UNSC.’ It further directed the Commission to assess the feasibility of conducting one of the quarterly briefings at the AU Headquarters. The session will also give an opportunity to follow up on several tasks from that session, including directing the AU Commission ‘to develop, in full respect of AU Assembly Decisions, a Matrix of Common African Positions on peace and security matters,’ as well as an ‘Annual Plan of Action’ to advance this.

Following this, on 7 August, the PSC will receive an ‘Update on the Situation in the Sahel.’ The region continues to face deepening crises through 2026. Earlier in July, the AU Commission’s Chairperson undertook a series of visits to the region, beginning with a two-day visit to Mali on 12 July 2026 aimed at strengthening engagement with the AU, followed by a visit to Burkina Faso on 15 July 2026 to ‘convey the Union’s solidarity with the Government and people of Burkina Faso in their efforts to restore peace, combat terrorism and promote stability.’ Just days later, terrorist attacks were launched against a detachment of the Nigerien Armed Forces on the Bankilaré–Téra axis in the Tillabéri region on 17 July 2026, followed by an ambush on 18 July 2026 against a convoy of the Malian Armed Forces between Anéfis and Gao. The resurgent groups, JNIM and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), now control more territory collectively than at any point since the 2012 Mali crisis, with JNIM combining guerrilla attacks with governance and service provision in areas it holds. The session affords the PSC an opportunity to seriously rethink AU’s approach to the situation in the Sahel, moving away from the exclusively legalistic and constitutionalism-centric approach to mobilising collective action to contain the existential threat facing the central Sahelian states and the accompanying spillover into coastal West Africa.

On 12 August, the PSC will hold a session to get an update on the ‘Progress made in Silencing the Guns in Africa roadmap.’ It is worth recalling that at its 14^th Extraordinary Session, held in Johannesburg on 6 December 2020, the AU Assembly decided to extend the Silencing the Guns (STG) timeline by a decade, to 2030. To strengthen implementation of this goal, a Monitoring and Evaluation Mechanism for the STG 2030 was adopted in June 2021, following a recommendation from the 28^th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of Heads of State. Falling within this framework, the upcoming session will offer an opportunity to take stock of the continent’s current security landscape, assess how far implementation has advanced, and identify effective strategies for closing the gap between Africa’s ambition to end conflict and the evolving realities on the ground, as extensively documented in Amani Africa special research report reviewing the first ten-year implementation of Silencing the Guns. The last time the PSC held a session on this theme was at its 1252^nd session held in December 2024. The session scheduled for this month will also serve as an occasion to follow up on some of the outcomes of that session, including the decision to comprehensively assess the progress and challenges to the agenda of silencing the guns through a high-level reflection forum and for the High-Representative on Silencing the Guns to brief the Council twice a year.

The next session will be held on 14 August. It will be a consultation between the PSC and the African Governance Architecture-African Peace and Security Architecture (AGA-APSA) Platform and the PRC Sub-Committee on Human Rights, Democracy and Governance (HRDG). The PSC last held such a consultation at its 1295^th session in August 2025, where it requested the AU Commission, in coordination with the AGA-APSA Platform, the PRC Sub-Committee on HRDG, and APRM, to develop a comprehensive matrix of all AU legal frameworks on governance, human rights, peace and security, and to assess whether these frameworks remain fit for purpose in addressing the continent’s complex governance and security challenges, as part of the broader review of governance, peace and security frameworks. This joint format was first established at the 1167^th session in August 2023, which brought the AGA-APSA Platform and the PRC Sub-Committee on HRDG together for the first time. Before that, the PSC had engaged each body separately, first with the AGA-APSA Platform at its 1098^th session in August 2022, and then with the PRC Sub-Committee at its 1095^th session that same month.

Following this, the PSC is scheduled to undertake a field visit to Sudan on 16 and 17 August. It is to be recalled that the PSC undertook a one-day visit to Port Sudan in October 2024.

After the field visit to Sudan, the PSC will convene a consultation with the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) on 19 August. It is worth recalling that the annual engagement will be held in accordance with the outcome of the last consultative meeting of the two bodies held in June 2023, contained in the 1160^th Communiqué of the PSC. From the meeting, the two bodies committed to institutionalise and regularise their annual joint meeting on peace and security in Africa, to be hosted alternately in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Midrand, South Africa. In this respect, this year’s meeting will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, building on the 1290^th meeting held in July 2025, in which it adopted the Conclusions of the Inaugural Joint Consultative meeting between the two bodies, held on 17 and 18 July 2025, Midrand, South Africa. The session will receive an update on the development of a roadmap and work plan for collaboration between the PSC and PAP, as tasked during the 1290^th meeting.

A day later, on 21 August, there will be the annual PSC and the African Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Consultation. The consultative meeting will be convened pursuant to Article 19 of the PSC Protocol, which calls for close cooperation between the PSC and the ACHPR in promoting peace, security and stability across Africa. Building on this provision, the PSC, at its 866^th meeting of August 2019, resolved to institutionalise this engagement through annual joint consultative meetings with the ACHPR. The most recent joint meeting was held in June 2025, as the 1284^th session, during which the PSC requested the ACHPR to give particular attention to the human rights situation of vulnerable groups disproportionately affected by armed conflict, including women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities, migrants, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and refugees. The meeting also reiterated the commitment to continue strengthening the PSC collaboration with the ACHPR, including through regular information sharing, as well as institutionalisation and regularisation of the consultation as an annual event.

On 24 August, there will be a coordination meeting of the AUCTC, APRM, CISSA and AFRIPOL on Continental Early Warning Systems (CEWS), focusing on ‘Validation of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool and APRM Early Warning.’ It is worth noting that at the 1320^th meeting of December 2025 on the ‘Continental Early Warning System and Security Outlook,’ the PSC underlined the need to strengthen the analytical convergence between AUCTC, CISSA, AFRIPOL and the RECs/RMs. The Commission was further tasked 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. The upcoming session will provide an opportunity to follow up on this.

The last substantial meeting will be held on 26 August, in which the PSC will receive a briefing by the C5 and the AU Special Envoy to South Sudan on the latest developments in the country. This will be the second session the PSC convenes this year, focusing substantially on the developments in the country as four months remain until the December 2026 elections. The session will build up from the 1343^rd meeting of 30 April 2026, in which the PSC, through official emails, adopted a communiqué endorsing the Report of the PSC Field Mission to the country conducted from 23 to 25 April 2026. Several tasks were raised from the communiqué worth following up on, including a call for the convening of an extraordinary IGAD ministerial meeting, and tasking the AU Commission Chairperson to expedite the deployment of a multidimensional technical needs assessment team to South Sudan ahead of the elections. The R-TGoNU was also tasked to subsequently submit its election-related needs to the AU Commission to help secure the support required for free, fair, democratic and inclusive elections.

The session comes against the backdrop of stalled progress in implementing major transitional tasks of the R-ARCSS, amid challenges including political tension and growing mistrust resulting from the continued house arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar. At the beginning of July, South Sudan’s parliament approved controversial amendments to the R-ARCSS, removing requirements for a population census and a permanent constitution before elections. President Kiir formally assented to the amendment on 22 July 2026, clearing the legal pathway, as per government framing, for the country to hold general elections in December 2026, delinking the permanent constitution and national census from the electoral timeline — a move seen as fundamentally altering the R-ARCSS’s structure by repealing provisions that had established the agreement’s supremacy over conflicting laws, thereby weakening its legitimacy. Recently, at a workshop in Juba on enhancing the role of South Sudanese stakeholders in implementing the Revitalised Peace Agreement, convened by IGAD, the Chairperson of R-JMEC stated that implementation of the R-ARCSS continues to be stalled, citing incomplete Transitional Security Arrangements, inadequate funding, population displacement, insecurity in various parts of the country, and uncertainty surrounding the inclusivity of the political process.

This session comes against the background of intensifying diplomatic efforts, which so far have produced no major breakthrough. IGAD’s Special Envoy’s visit to Juba on 16 June for a meeting focused on the country’s ongoing political transition and preparations for the 2026 elections. Ten days later, former President of Tanzania and AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, Jakaya Kikwete, briefed the Chairperson of the AU Commission, the C5 and the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, on the findings and outcomes of his recent visit to South Sudan. In addition, in July, the C5 — led by South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Roland Lamola, in his capacity as Chair of the ministerial committee — visited Juba to assess progress on implementing the Declarations of the C5 Plus Summit, held on the margins of the 39th AU Summit in February 2026 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In addition to the substantive sessions, the PSC subsidiary bodies are also scheduled to meet during the month. On 6 August, the Military Staff Committee (MSC) will meet on matters relating to the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding of the African Standby Force (ASF). On 10 August, the Committee of Experts (CoE) will meet for consultations on the ‘Consideration of the Continental Threats Assessment and Risks Mapping Tool.’ Another CoE meeting will be held on 25 August to consider ‘the Guidelines on listing and delisting.’

On 29 and 30 August, there will be an Extraordinary AU Summit on ‘Strengthening Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa,’ to be held in Luanda, Angola. This comes following the AU Assembly Decision of February 2026, in which the Luanda Summit was seen as a strategic convening devoted exclusively to conflict prevention in Africa, with concrete, measurable and time-bound deliverables, rather than a declarative forum.

The footnote of the PPoW also provides for the PSC Chairperson to chair the 2^nd Political Meeting of the AGA-APSA Platform on 4 August. The Chairperson is also expected to participate in the Opening Ceremony of ‘Youth, Peace and Security,’ to be held in Bujumbura, Burundi, on 10 August 2026. Finally, there is also a planned monthly exchange between the PSC and the UNSC Chairs.