Tomorrow (25 August), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to hold its second annual joint consultative meeting with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.

Following opening remarks from Mohamed Khaled, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for August 2025 and Stella Chiripo Ndau, Chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, Bankole Adeoye, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), is expected to deliver remarks.

This year’s meeting, scheduled to take place virtually, builds on the commitment made during the inaugural consultative meeting held on 30 August 2024 in Gaborone, Botswana, where both parties agreed to institutionalise annual consultations alternating between Addis Ababa and Gaborone. Rooted in Article 16 of the PSC Protocol and the 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the AU Commission and RECs/RMs, the meeting reflects ongoing efforts to strengthen coordination and collaboration in advancing peace, security and stability in the Southern Africa region.

At last year’s inaugural meeting, the PSC and SADC Organ reflected on lessons learned from SADC’s engagements through the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) and the SADC Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC). The agenda covered terrorism and violent extremism in Southern Africa, the situation in eastern DRC, resource mobilisation for regional peace operations, and peacemaking efforts under the AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative. The meeting also underscored the historic significance of institutionalising a structured PSC–SADC platform as a vital step toward enhancing regional responses to peace and security threats.

One of the agenda items in tomorrow’s consultative meeting is expected to be the situation in Eastern DRC and SADC’s engagement. SAMIDRC, launched to stabilise eastern DRC, officially began a phased withdrawal on 29 April 2025 and concluded its military mandate earlier than anticipated, raising concerns about the sustainability of SADC’s military interventions. The forced withdrawal, announced on 13 March 2025 following military setbacks, further highlighted the need for reassessing the processes, including the coordination required with the AU, in the deployment of such a mission and the need for aligning of the legal basis in initiating and deploying such missions at the SADC level with that of the AU both for ensuring coherence and avoiding the kind of setbacks that SAMIDRC experienced.

Both the PSC and the SADC Organ have previously raised alarm over inadequate, unpredictable, and unsustainable funding for peace operations. This issue became a major challenge for SADC’s missions in both Mozambique and DRC, despite the fact that SADC tried to self-finance a significant portion of the funding for the missions. The issue of funding is another major area where the experience of both SAMIM and SAMIDRC highlight the necessity for rethinking SADC’s approach and find ways of aligning its processes with that of the AU as a critical step to establish the ground work for enabling future missions to benefit from UN assessed contributions within the framework of UN Security Council Resolution 2719.

The recent development in the DRC Peace Process is also expected to be of central concern in tomorrow’s agenda. Despite the withdrawal of SAMIDRC, SADC continues to provide ongoing support for political and diplomatic initiatives to resolve the conflict in the region. Following the direction by the Joint EAC-SADC summit of 8 February 2025 for the merger of the Luanda and Nairobi processes, former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Uhuru Kenyatta, Sahle-Work Zewde, Mokgweetsi Masisi and Catherine Samba-Panza as facilitators.

In a further step to rationalize and create a single structure, a meeting of the co-chairs of the Joint EAC–SADC summit and the Panel of Facilitators held on 1 August 2025 in Nairobi adopted a framework for the merger of the Nairobi and Luanda processes and agreed to integrate AU, EAC, and SADC mediation structures under a joint secretariat led by the AU Commission in Addis Ababa to overcome fragmentation and enhance coherence in mediation efforts. Two of the outcomes are of particular interest for tomorrow’s meeting.

The first of this is the decision that entrusted the lead role to the AU Commission in respect to the joint secretariat of the merged peace process, thereby assigning an enhanced coordination role of the AU on this file. The consultations are expected to explore strategies on how to take this forward in practical terms.

Second and most notably, the outcome document called for ‘all other ongoing initiatives and stakeholders to align with the Africa-led process’, hence purporting to assert primacy.

This is where the merged framework also intersects with other external initiatives. The US-mediated Washington Peace Accord of 27 June 2025 sought to de-escalate tensions between the DRC and Rwanda, while Qatar facilitated dialogue between Kinshasa and the M23, culminating in a 23 April 2025 Declaration of Principles. Although Doha’s attempt to broker a peace agreement in August is yet to materialise, Qatar’s continued involvement underscores the growing role of external actors in African peace processes, a dynamic with both opportunities and risks to African-led conflict prevention and resolution practices.

At the political level, the 45^th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government on 17 August 2025 reaffirmed commitment to peace and stability in the DRC and welcomed the AU – EAC -SADC joint mediation efforts. The summit also called for complementarity and harmonisation between Africa-led processes and other initiatives, underscoring the importance of maintaining continental leadership while leveraging external support.

Tomorrow’s consultative meeting is also expected to deliberate and make actionable decisions towards responding to the need for sustainable funding for peace operations, building on commitments from last year’s consultative meeting to jointly explore innovative means of joint internal resource mobilisation for peace operations, including special levies, private sector partnerships and continental financial entities.

The expected outcome of the second annual joint consultative meeting is a joint communique. The meeting is expected to reiterate the primacy of the role of the PSC as provided for in Article 16 of the Protocol establishing the PSC and the role of the SADC organ as provided for in the relevant SADC instruments. The two organs are expected to also reaffirm their commitment to regular, structured cooperation and interoperable early warning systems that respond to identified gaps in coordination due to structural differences. They may also call on the AU Commission and SADC Secretariat on identifying ways and means of enhancing policy coherence of SADC with the AU based on the lessons from SAMIDRC and the need for creating the foundation for operationalising UNSC Resolution 2719 for future deployments. On the DRC, the meeting is anticipated to welcome the outcome of the meeting of EAC–SADC Co-Chairs and call on the AU Commission to work with SADC and EAC secretariats to speed up the process of the joint secretariat and joint mediation framework. It is also expected that while welcoming some of the progress registered with the signing of agreements in Washington and the Declaration of Principles in Doha, the two bodies may echo the call of the joint SADC-EAC co-chairs meeting on the need for closer coordination and alignment with African initiatives.