PREVIEW
More wars are being fought on the continent than at any point in the last eighty years
When they arrive in Addis Ababa for the African Union summit in February, African leaders will have to make some stark choices as they step-up efforts to tackle the security crises that are killing tens of thousands of people directly and many more indirectly. The IMF and World Bank have warned that the rising tide of conflict in Africa, especially in Sudan, is holding back regional growth and reversing long-term developmental gains.
The leaders’ agenda will go far beyond electing the new chairperson of the AU Commission. A strong candidate should be able to gain the confidence of the assembled heads of state to push through radical reforms, to boost co-ordination with regional organisations and galvanise its finances.
Like many continental organisations, the AU has been diverted by jostling between rival states and external meddling. But its current priority is to reorganise its capacity to resolve conflicts and launch peace-building programmes.
Many of the conflicts across the Sahelian belt – from Mali to Sudan – have crashed off the AU’s agenda. The AU’s sanctions against military regimes lock it out of constructive involvement in some of the worst wars on the continent. The eco-system of organisations set up by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo and Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2002 has fallen into disrepair. Short-term national priorities predominate.
The AU’s operations in Somalia are at risk as tensions rise between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu. Egypt’s offer of troops looks calculated to irritate Ethiopia and could further undermine the mission. Elsewhere, UN and AU peacekeeping missions face pressure diplomatically and financially.
Kenya’s President William Ruto started in office with an ambitious continental agenda but has tightened the national focus after Generation Z protestors forced him to drop a tax-hiking budget and sack his cabinet. Even Ruto’s support for veteran oppositionist Raila Odinga to win the chair of the AU Commission owes something to his local priorities. That is keeping Odinga busy outside Kenya.
Attempts by Angola’s President João Lourenço, representing the AU and Southern Africa to mediate in Kinshasa’s and Kigali’s war for land and resources in the east of Congo-Kinshasa, have been making halting progress. It showed the critical role that sitting heads of state and elders, such as Mbeki and Obasanjo, can play in pressuring combatants.
Conflict trend
Such initiatives are rarer, and the trend-lines are going in the wrong direction. Last year, researchers at Sweden’s Uppsala University and Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo tracked 28 state-based conflicts in 16 of the AU’s 55 member states.
More wars are being fought in Africa than at any point in the last 80 years. The causes are multiple and often country specific. But there are commonalities such as climate change and extreme weather displacing millions of farmers together with harsher economic conditions and mounting debt burdens.
Another commonality is institutional failure. The UN system is weaker and more divided than at any time in its 80-year history. It reflects deepening geopolitical schisms in the international system. Officials in Washington and Beijing talk about the risks of Cold War II. For many African governments the second Cold War is between the global south and global north – whether it is in arguments over debt restructuring, climate finance or whether the UN sets rules on tax and illicit financial flows. That, together with the growing weight of middle powers in Africa, will further complicate the AU’s attempts to reform and adapt to a faltering international system.
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