THE NEW AFRICAN PEACE AND SECURITY ARCHITECTURE (APSA) ANDCONFLICT PREVENTION, MANAGEMENT, RESOLUTION AND POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION IN AFRICA

BY

OKEKE, V.O.S. (Ph. D)okekevos@yahoo.com. Ph. No: 08033847373

LECTURER,DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

ANAMBRA STATE UNIVERSITY

&

ANICHE, E. T.anitoox@yahoo.com. Ph. No: 07067554191

LECTURER,INSTITUTE OF CONTINUING EDUCATION

IMO STATE UNIVERSITY, OWERRI

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ABSTRACT

Africa is a continent ridden by crises, and thus,confronted with enormous security challenges in thepost-cold war 21st century. The end of cold war hasinstead of reducing conflict in Africa exacerbated itsuggesting that problem is more internal than externalrequiring Africa to look more inward to resolve some ofthese practices that cause crisis such as ethnicity,religious intolerance, corruption, crisis of regimechange among others, rather than blaming it onproliferation of small arms and light weapons inAfrica. It was under this state of affairs that AfricanUnion (AU) in collaboration with other external actorslike European Union (EU) and in synergy with sub-regional security organizations in Africa such asECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) among othersestablished the new African Peace and SecurityArchitecture (APSA). The central theses of this paperare that one, the African Union’s (AU) new peace andsecurity architecture has inadequate institutionalcapacity to pursue its mandate of conflict prevention,management, resolution and post-conflictreconstruction; and two, that the African Union has notgenerated enough external supports to strengthen thenew African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).

Introduction

African has been deservedly described or labeled

as crisis region. This is because of the prevalence of

political crisis and instability in the continent right

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from the mid-20th century when most of the states in

the continent become sovereign states following the

granting of independence by their erstwhile colonial

master. By then the crises engulfing the region was

attributed to or blamed on colonialism and the divide

and rule manner through which the colonialists

administered the territories. This divisive colonial

administrative style and arbitrary partition of the

continent were therefore seen as the root cause of

ethnic bigotry and religious fundamentalism in Africa.

Nkrumah (1968) earlier foresaw this problem and

suggested establishment of Africa Continental

Government or United States of Africa with an African

High Command but this was not to be as many of the

continent leaders preferred establishment of continent

or regional organization leading to the formation of

Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, and now

African Union (AU) since 2002. Immediately after

independence in the 1960s, many of the African states

like Congo Brazzaville, Congo Kinshasa, Ethiopia, etc,

were engulfed by political crises in the form of

insurrection, insurgency and rebellion. African soon

became a devastated continent characterized by

proliferation of failed state in which hunger,

starvation, food insecurity or crises, poverty,

diseases, malnutrition and under-nutrition, poor

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standard of living, debt overhang or crisis, low life

expectancy, high infant mortality rate, political

crises and instability became a way of life.

The first thirty years of independence of most

African states were also the era of cold war or period

of ideological war of socialism and capitalism between

the East led by defunct USSR and West led by the United

States of America, respectively. Not a few blamed the

political crises and violence in Africa on the cold war

where the former USSR and the United States of America

in the scramble for allies used some of the African

states to fight their proxy wars by sponsoring and

supporting insurrection in these African states through

military aids, arms shipment and military training.

Consequently Africa became a ground for testing new

weapons by these cold war super powers.

But with the end of cold war in 1990 following the

disintegration of Soviet Union, the fall of Berlin Wall

or reunification of East and West Germany, and the

retreat of socialism, armed conflict in Africa assumed

a greater magnitude against all expectations. For

example, there were armed conflicts in Sudan (Darfur

crises), Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda,

Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire,

etc, towards the end of 20th century and beginning of

twenty first century all in the post-cold war era.

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Analysts, thus, begun to lay the blame on the movement

of small arms and light weapons in Africa ignoring the

role of mis-governance or misrule, poor leadership,

sit-tight leadership, corruption, poverty, under-

development, economies crisis, debt crisis, ethnicity,

religious violence, etc, in causing and exacerbating

political tensions in Africa considering that most of

these crises are internal that is insurrection or

rebellion within these states and not inter-state

conflicts. The implication being that over fifty years

of independence in most African states have been fifty

years or five decades wasted of opportunities and

generations.

It is against this backdrop that the African Union

in collaboration with European Union, and other

international organizations and states like United

Nations Group of Eight countries (G. 8), United States

of America, etc, decided to establish African Peace and

Security Architecture (APSA) for conflict prevention,

conflict management, conflict resolution, post-conflict

reconstruction or rebuilding and generally peace

building and peace supports in Africa. For instance,

Kingebiel (2005) writes that peace and security have

become priority issues for the African continent, and

for the international community. The dynamics that

Africa has developed on its own, as well as the

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dynamics currently involved in outside support for

Africa, are concerned not exclusively, but in large

measure with military capabilities. In fact, the past

many examples indicate that mechanisms put in place by

African states themselves or by international community

have been unwilling or unable to intervene militarily

in emergency situations to protect civilian

populations.

Thus, we contend that one, the African Union’s

(AU) new peace and security architecture has inadequate

institutional capacity to pursue its mandate of

conflict prevention, management, resolution and post-

conflict reconstruction in Africa; two, the African

Union (AU) has not generated enough external supports

to strengthen the new African Peace and Security

Architecture (APSA).

Theoretical Perspective

This study is essentially predicated on neo-

liberal institutionalism. Neo-liberal institutionalism

or regime theory is derived from the liberal tradition

that argues that international institutions or regimes

affect the behaviour of states or other international

actors. It assumes that cooperation is possible in the

anarchic system of states, indeed, regimes are by

definition, instances of international cooperation.

Thus, in spite of anarchy, cooperation can exist that

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could be facilitated through international

institutions, norms and regimes some of these

international cooperation’s include international

trade, human rights, humanitarian issues, collective

security among other issues. These instances of

cooperation are regimes which are conceived as

institutions possessing norms, decision, rules and

procedures which facilitate a convergence of

expectations. Institutions are rules that determine the

decision-making process (Goldstein and Pevehouse, 2008:

20-60; Burchill and Linklater, 2001: 30-70).

Neo-liberal institutionalism or international

regime theory has a variant of integration theories

which include functionalism, neo-functionalism, theory

of complex interdependence and intergovernmentalism.

But we for the purpose of this study adopts

specifically neo-functionalism of Ernst B. Haas.

Neo-functionalism of Ernst B. Haas unlike

functionalism of David Mitrany is non-normative and

describes or explains the process of regional

integration base on empirical data. Aside being

empirical, neo-functionalism unlike functional theory

does not focus primarily on global integration rather

its primary concern is on regional integration. In

other words, functionalism and neo-functionalism are

both theories of supranationalism, but while the former

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emphasizes global supranationalism, the latter reifies

regional supranationalism (Echezona, 1998; Burchill &

Linklater, 2005).

Neo-functionalism is a theory of regional

integration in which integration is considered to be

inevitable process, rather than a desirable state of

affairs that could be introduced by the political or

technocratic elites of the involved states. There are

three main principles of neo-functionalism; (i) the

principle of positive spillover effects states that

integration between states in one sector, that is,

economic sector will eventually ramify into integration

or co-operation in other sectors such as political,

socio-cultural, security, etc. (ii) the mechanism of a

transfer in domestic allegiance which assumes that as

the process of integration gathers momentum in an

increasingly pluralistic domestic society of each

state; interest groups and other associations will

transfer their allegiance or loyalty away from national

institutions towards the supranational institution(s)

when they begin to realize that their material

interests or well being can be better pursued through

supranational institution(s) than the pre-existing

national institutions; and (iii) principle of

technocratic automaticity which states that as

integration hastens the supranational institution(s)

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will take the lead in fostering further integration as

they become more powerful and more autonomous of the

member states (Echezona, 1998; Haas, 1970).

These three main principles of neo-functionalism

embody John Galtung’s Staircase Hypothesis/Strategy

which involves the process of beginning with limited

domain (or memberships) and limited scope (or sectors

or area of cooperation) and gradually deepening the

scope before extending the domain. Deepening the scope

means moving from the initial areas of cooperation to

other areas of cooperation or bringing in new sectors,

whereas, extending the domain means admitting new

memberships.

An Overview of Peace and Security Architecture in

Africa

Africa has enormous security challenges owing to

prevalence of political crisis and instability in the

continent right from the mid-20th century when majority

of African states became independent and sovereign

states. The hope that situation will improve in the

post-cold war era dimmed with the deepening

intensification, escalation, exacerbation, spread and

increasing prevalence of violent conflicts in the 21st

century in Africa. The blame shifted from colonial

legacy or heritage and proxy wars of the two

ideological camps or super powers of cold war era to

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now movement or proliferation small arms and ammunition

in Africa. However, more attention has been paid to the

external factors than to the internal factors of poor

political leadership, (misrule or mis-governance,

political corruption, crisis of regime change,

legitimacy crisis, failure to relinquish power, life

presidency, military incursion or intervention into

politics, etc); ethnic chauvinism, religious bigotry;

etc. Any measures by Africans themselves to tackle this

security situation must focus on these internal factors

to be successful.

It was in order to confront these security

challenges in Africa and the crisis engulfing and

devastating Africa that African Union (AU) in

collaboration with various external actors, especially

European Union (EU) and United Nations (UN) and synergy

with sub-regional security organizations like ECOMOG,

etc, decided to set up African Peace and Security

Architecture (APSA). Under the AUC peace and security

department, African Peace and Security Architecture

(APSA) includes a number of mechanisms for conflict

prevention, management and resolution as well as post-

conflict reconstruction. To complement the APSA, AU has

created the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS),

Panel of the Wise (PoW) and African Standby Force

(ASF).

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However, the African Peace and Security

Architecture (APSA) constitutes a framework for crisis

management on the African continent while the African

Standby Force (ASF) is considered as the operational

arm of this framework. The African Union’s (AU)

ambition is to make the African Standby Force (ASF)

operational in 2010. The Continental Early Warning

system (CEWS) together with regional early warning

systems, is set up to anticipate and prevent conflicts

in Africa through collecting or gathering data and

information in order to help the Peace and Security

Council (PSC) to make decisions and to guide the

African Standby Force (ASF) in the deployment of its

troops.

The Organizational Structure of the African Peace and

Security Architecture (APSA)

The APSA is built around a Peace and Security

Council (PSC), which is composed of fifteen

representatives of African Union (AU) member states,

and is the standing decision-making organ for the

prevention, management and resolution of conflicts. It

works in close cooperation with the African Union

Commission (AUC) in particular with the Commissioner

for Peace and Security and its under-staffed Peace and

Security Directorate (PSD). So far, the PSC has

operated without the support of dedicated working

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groups and AU member states have not been able to

ensure a regular participation in its meetings, mostly

due to lack of human and financial resources in their

embassies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the headquarters of

AU.

The APSA under the aegis of Peace and Security

Council (PSC) constitutes the Panel of the Wise (PoW),

the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) and the

African Standby Force (ASF). A Panel of the Wise (PoW)

is composed by five respected African public figures,

one for each African region. PoW has only recently

began to exercise its functions in the area of conflict

prevention and mediation, but with modest results

(Pirozzii, 2011).

A Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) designed

as a conflict anticipation and prevention tool that

consists of a central observation and monitoring centre

in Addis Ababa called Situation Room (SR) and regional

units, is still in process of being fully

operationalised. In other words, the CEWS is, together

with regional early warning systems, set up to

anticipate and prevent conflicts in Africa through data

and information gathering. This is to help the Peace

and Security Council (PSC) to take decisions and to

guide the African Standby Force (ASF) in the deployment

of troops (Pirozzi, 2011).

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The African Standby Force (ASF) was established by

African Union (AU) to conduct autonomous peace

operations and other security-related interventions in

the African continent. The ASF will be composed of a

central headquarters located at the AU Commission and

five sub-regional structures including standby brigades

with civilian, police and military components, and it

will be ready for rapid deployment at appropriate

notice. In other words, the ASF is composed of the

Regional Standby Forces (RSF) which are being developed

across the continent in order to provide Africa with a

capability to deal with crisis, and the five sub-

regional organizations are preparing this multi-

dimensional capability encompassing military, police

and civilian components. This force will be available

at both sub-regional and continental levels. Africa and

the European Union (EU) have adopted a joint strategy

comprising several action points in order to meet the

objectives. This, four procedures have been developed,

forces identified, exercise mounted and evaluation is

currently underway (Pirozzii, 2011).

Moreover, the AMANI AFRICA cycle is being used as

vehicle to assist the African Union in making the

Africa Standby Force (ASF) operational through training

and evaluating the continental decision-making process.

The AMANI AFRICA cycle was officially launched on

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November 20, 2008 at the AU-EU Ministerial Troika in

Addis Ababa. Over the two year cycle the programme will

conduct a range of activities to train AU staff, in

accordance with the AU/ASF doctrine and procedures to

improve decision-making for crisis management at

continental level. In practical terms it will involve

strengthening the politico-strategic capabilities of

the African Union by putting in place procedures and

permanent mission structures covering everything from

political decision-making to the commitment of forces

and ensuring predictable funding.

The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA)

will engage its constituting bodies such as PoW, CEWS,

ASF, etc, to develop a mandate and an integrated

mission plan. A scenario called CARANA has been

specifically developed in Africa which will simulate a

crisis in a fictitious area that needs an African Union

(AU) engagement. However, Pirozzii (2011) has noted

that the original goal of developing the capacity to

manage complex peacekeeping operations by June 2010,

validated by a command post exercise, has not been met.

For the time being, African Union (AU) structures can

count on a very limited staff for the planning and the

deployment of peace operations and there are huge gaps

among the five regional brigades.

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The APSA Institutional Incapacity and Prevention,

Management, Resolution of Conflicts and Reconstruction

of Post-conflict in Africa

According to Pirozzii (2011) from the overall

assessment of the functioning of the APSA, it is clear

that African peace and security structures still face

resource deficiencies in terms of funding staffing and

logistics. Poor financial and human resources

management, together with lengthy procurement

procedures, are key factors contributing to these gaps

and affect the capacity of the AU to absorb external

funding. To this must be added the lack of coordination

between central and regional structures and the

imbalances between and within regional arrangements.

For example, a special fund or peace fund was

created in the framework of the APSA with the view to

providing the necessary financial resources for PSOs

and other operational activities related to peace and

security. This fund was conceived as an instrument that

should primarily rely on financial appropriations from

the regular budget of the Union including arrears of

contributions, voluntary contributions from member

states and other sources within Africa like private

sector, civil society and individuals. As a

complementary source of funding the Chairperson of the

AU Commission is tasked to raise and accept voluntary

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contributions from sources outside Africa. In the case

of PSOs, states contributing contingents are invited to

bear the cost of their participation during the first

three months, and are refunded within a maximum period

of six months by the Union which then proceeds to

finance the operations (Pirozzii, 2011: 7).

However, experience so far has demonstrated that a

number of member states have difficulties in honouring

their financial obligations, thus, jeopardizing efforts

to make AU institutions work effectively and

maintaining them heavily dependent on external funding.

Therefore, the assessed contributions to finance

peacekeeping and the AU reimbursement within six months

of states contributing contingents to PSOs have not

always been implemented. On average only 6 percent of

the AU regular budget is allocated to the peace fund,

for instance, the budget of the AU for the year 2010

amounting to 250, 453, 69 7 US dollars even as member

states have recently decided to increase their

contribution to the peace fund to 12 percent over a

period of three years starting from 2011 (Pirozzii,

2011).

Consequently, most of the structures and

activities of the AU in the field of peace and security

are covered by external sources. This poses serious and

urgent questions of sustainability in the longer period

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even as the external donors are reconsidering their

support to the AU in order to achieve greater collusion

predictability and flexibility. On the whole, there is

an increasing recognition of the necessity for the AU

to take a longer term perspective on measures to reduce

external dependency in the area of peace and stability

and get related activities funded through the AU

regular budget (Pirozzii, 2011).

Pirozzii (2011) as well notes that there is a

tendency to over emphasize the peacekeeping aspects at

the expense of conflict prevention and peace building

activities. As a result, effective understanding of the

root causes and drivers of conflict in Africa has been

hampered by the dysfunctional links between APSA

structures and its policy priorities. In particular

activities have not been based on systematic conflict

analysis that would have enabled a better understanding

of the profile, actors and dynamics of a conflict and

incorporate the expertise of local actors.

From the foregoing, we contend that the new

African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) lacks

institutional capacity to achieve prevention,

management and resolution of conflicts as well as post-

conflict reconstruction in African owing to a number of

institutional incapacity and structural defects such as

under-funding, understaffing, etc.

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The Rationale for the Intervention of External Actors

in African Crisis

Peace and security have become priority issues not

only for the African continent, but also for the

international community. Although these issues were

recognized in the past as urgent challenges facing the

continent, until recently they had not gained the

marked profile they are attaining as political

priorities for concrete political approaches and

efforts inside and outside Africa. The parametres have

clearly shifted in the direction of greater visibility

and a heightened political will to act. However, the

immediate importance of the new peace and security

architecture is associated with a number of different

factors some of which are interlinked (Kingebriel,

2005).

One, the creation of the African Union (AU) in

2002 is very important in the development of a new

peace and security architecture. In structural terms,

the AU offers a set of entirely new proactive

conditions whereas the OAU, its predecessors, was

marked by a largely unsatisfactory record in the field

of peace and security, owing to the inhibiting

principles of sovereign equality and non-interference

in the affairs of member states.

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Two, the dynamics developed by African reform

efforts have been accompanied by an altered outside

perception of Africa’s growing significance to

international politics. Today more attention is being

paid to Africa’s role in international relations than

at the end of the 1980s, after the end of the cold war

and the onset of the mono-polar or unipolar world. This

greater measure of attention is associated only in part

with ongoing efforts to reduce poverty and redress

structural deficits (Kingebriel, 2005). Thus, in the

context of the new international security agenda,

Africa has come to be regarded as highly relevant in

terms of security policy. As a report by the US Council

on Foreign Affairs notes, Africa affects the G-8’s

global interests in security.

Three, apart from the global security perspective,

Africa is currently experiencing a geostrategic

renaissance in that some African regions are becoming

important world oil suppliers. The US, primarily as

well as other countries such as China, is increasingly

coming to view parts of the continent from the angle of

energy security.

Four, external actors are adapting their

instruments and rethinking their options, for example,

the UN Security Council has began to renew its peace

related efforts in Africa like in Burundi, Cote

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d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, etc,

after a series of disappointing and problematic peace

missions in the 1990s particularly in Angola, Rwanda,

Somalia, etc (Kingebriel, 2005).

Five, Africa has assumed a new strategic place in

US foreign policy and in definition of vital US

national interests. This shift moved US away from the

past habit of treating Africa as a humanitarian

afterthought; and began to reverse a decade long

decline in the US presence and engagement in Africa.

Also, following the struggle against international

terrorism, Africa has come to play an important role in

the US National Security Strategy since September 2002.

In addition, the US sees Africa as a region of growing

importance to its oil supply in that the strategic

thinking in the US is increasingly influenced by

America’s growing dependence on African oil. For

example, the US currently imports 13-14 % of its oil

from Africa, a figure that is expected to rise to

roughly 20 % in ten years.

Six, the European Security Strategy (ESS) adopted

by the EU Council in December 2003 sees the sub-Saharan

Africa’s vulnerability to crisis as a growing concern.

Even the British government’s aim is to accord Africa a

higher level of significance on the international

agenda. The issue of peace and security is of high

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priority as is indicated by the report of the

Commission for Africa. Also, the discussion in Germany

indicates that German policy is according Africa a

relatively higher level of attention. Germany’s

increased interest in Africa has as well found

expression in official high level visits to Africa,

which were dedicated not least to the issues of peace

and security. Thus, stability and security rank high in

recent government documents dealing with Africa. Even

the German Foreign Office notes that Germany and other

European countries have an immediate interest in

security-related stability in sub-Saharan Africa, thus,

military and civil conflict prevention is playing an

increasingly large role in cooperation with Africa.

Consequently, a large number of military

interventions have been conducted in Africa by external

actors as Africa has increasingly become the focus of

international attention. For instance, Africa has

increasingly become the focus point of UN peacekeeping

mission after his low ebb of the 1990s such that out of

the sixteen operations underway throughout the world on

February 28, 2005, seven were concerned with Africa.

The UN’s annual budget, July 2004 to June 2005, has

earmarked a total of US$ 3.87 for these mission, the

percentage of these funds projected for measures in

Africa is high at 74.5% or US$ 2.89.The largest mission

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worldwide involving 14,943 military personnel and

1,074, civilian police is currently underway in

Liberia, while that UN Mission in Sierra Leone

(UNAMSIL) topped the list with over 17, 000 troops

before its reduction in 2004 (Kingebriel, 2005).

At presents various external actors are building

the capabilities for rapid military interventions

including the NATO Response Force (NRF) which reached a

preliminary states of operational readiness in October

2004, and the EU’s battle group concept designed for

mission in the African continent. The battle group

concept was first agreed bilaterally by Britain and

France in November 2003, which Germany joined in

February 2004, and in November 2004, Europe-wide

agreement was reached by a joint initiative of EU

ministers of defence. The concept provides for 13

battle groups, each of which is to include 1,500 troops

and is to be available within 15days.

In Germany, plans are maturing to deploy the

Bundeswehr on the African continent, which was active

in the framework of Operation Artemis is in 2003. In

addition in November 2004, the German government

decided to provide air transport capacities to ferry

troops to mission areas in which the African mission in

Sudan (AMIS) is active. There are plans to deploy up to

200 Bundeswchr troops in this framework. Also, at the

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2004 G. 8 Summit, the US announced its intention to

significantly increase the funds it provides in African

crisis area to US$ 66o million over five years

(Kingebriel, 2005).

Earlier in 2001, the British government set up two

interdepartmental funding pools with a regional focus

on Africa designed to promote joint conflict-related

projects of various ministries and departments. The

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Department

for International Development (DFID), and the Ministry

of Defence (MoD) are involved in these pools, and the

DFID is responsible for the African pool. Other donors,

Germany, Canade, etc, are providing capacity building

support for the AU’s Peace and Security Directorate

with the UN Development Programme playing a catalytic

role (Kingebriel, 2005).

The AU-APSA and the Role of External Actors

The African Peace Facility (APF) established in

2004 is the main financing tool to support the Africa-

EU Partnership on Peace and Security following a

request of African leaders in order to provide funding

for African-led PSOs and capacity building activities.

The APF is funded through the European Development Fund

(EDF) under the Cotonou Agreement. This implies that

the use of the APF is subject to significant

limitations, and the most important one concerns

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military expenditures. The APF can be used to finance

costs incurred by African countries in deploying their

peacekeeping forces in Africa, for example, per diems,

rations, medical consumables and facilities, transport,

fuel, troop allowances and communication equipment, but

under no circumstances to cover ammunition, arms and

specific military equipment, salaries for troops and

military training for soldiers. These latter kinds of

expenditures have to be financed through other

financial resources, in most cases by bilateral

contributions from EU member states (Pirozzii, 2011).

The EU-African peace facility capacity building

component amounts to almost 34.7 million euro annually,

out of which 27 million euro derived from the European

Development Fund (EDF) and 7.7 million euro from the

European Commission development budget for South

Africa. The objective of this component is to increase

the capacity of the African Union (AU) and of the

regional economic communities (RECs) in the planning

and conduct of Peace Support Operations (PSO) on the

continent. Out of the African Peace Facility (APF)

envelop of 27million euro, a contribution agreement of

6 million euro was signed between the European

Commission and the African Union Commission (AUC) in

October 2004 to reinforce the AUC Peace and Security

Department; 1 million euro have been earmarked for

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African Standby Force (ASF) for workshops, the

remaining 20 million euro were spent mainly to cover

staff reinforcement, training and equipment on the

African Standby Force (ASF) and the RECs. Also, 6

million euro of APF funds were earmarked for enhancing

institutional capacity of the AUC Peace and Security

Department (PSD) within its main areas of activities.

This included recruitment of additional staff, the

rental of office premises and the purchase of office

equipment. The objective is to strengthen the PSD’s

role and leadership in promoting peace, stability and

security. The programme aims at; one , strengthening

the capacity of the AU to implement the various

elements of the AU Peace and Security Council;, two,

strengthen the AU planning cell responsible for

strategies and military planning for peace support

operations; and three, strengthening the capacity of

the PSD in the areas of financial and administrative

management for peace support operations. In addition, a

joint EU-AU study was carried out to identify the long-

term capacity needs of the AUC and other sub-regional

organizations in Africa. The outcome of this assessment

served as basic for subsequent Contribution Agreements

related to AU capacity building in the field of peace

and security

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According to Pirozzii (2011) the initial APF

allocation of 250 million euro came from the 9th EDF

between 2000 and 2007. However, these funds proved soon

to be insufficient, mainly due to the financing of the

AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), and the APF financial

envelop was raised to 440 million euro in 2007.

Additional funding of the original allocation was

provided through four successive replenishments, the

last which relied on contributions from EU member

states, namely, to finance ASF activities, to develop

human resources within the AU commission, to reinforce

institution-building at international and regional

levels. Out of three contracted funds, slightly more

than a half was actually paid due to the AU’s

difficulties in recruiting personnel and implementing

related projects. However, under the 10th EDF between

2008 and 2013, the APF initiative has been expanded to

300 million euro. The funds allocated to PSOs have

been reduced to 200 million euro, while a greater part

of the available resources, that is, 65 million euro

has been devoted to capacity building. There is the

creation of a pool funding mechanism for salaries of

AUC personnel, which would allow a more coordinated and

continuous support to staffing, currently financed on a

project basis by multiple donors such as EU, UN, and

bilateral contributions, support to the work of the

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Panel of the Wise (PoW) and the development of

mediation unit at the regional level; support to the

African training capabilities in peace and security.

Some improvement have been designed for the phase

of the APF, for example, additional contributions from

EU member states, authorized in the last part of the

previous phase, became a permanent feature in the has

this cycle. This means that no specific calls for

contributions are needed anymore, thus, simplifying the

approval process and reducing the transaction costs. In

order to speed up the decision making process when

necessary and to inject funds faster, the new APF also

includes an Early Response Mechanism (ERM) which is

aimed at financing activities such as first stages of

mediation actions in the framework of preventive

diplomacy; identification and fact finding missions to

initiate the planning process of PSOs, temporary and ad

hoc reinforcement of the planning cell for a potential

operation. It relies on an ad hoc, shortened decision-

making procedure and has an allocation of 15 million

euro (Pirozzii, 2007; 2011).

Earlier in 2007, the 7.7 million euro of the EC

development budget for South Africa was allocated to

establish REC liaison offices with the AU and further

develop and consolidate early warning capacity

achievements. Out of the 7.7 million euro of the South

27

African development contribution to be specific, almost

3 million euro was earmarked for the CEWS. Priority was

given to regional economic communities (RECs) whose

early warning systems are less developed than others.

European support to African peace and security is

ensured not only by funds ands and technical

cooperation coming from the EU institutions, but also

by a series of initiatives implemented by EU member

states, both in the framework of the Africa-EU

partnership and on their bilateral relationships with

African actors. In particular, EU member states

released matching funds for the African Peace Facility

in order to support AU-led PSOs, offer support to AU

and refund organizations for the operationalization of

the APSA, and regularly contribute to training,

technical cooperation and exchange of expertise with

African personnel. However, Pirozzii (2011) has noted

that the current economic and financial crisis is

likely to have a severe and long lasting impact on the

resources allocated by the EU member states to peace

and security in Africa.

Although, the AU is generating enormous interests

and concerns from external actors, both bilateral and

multilateral, it is still insufficient to strengthen

the new African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA),

especially in terms of institutional capacity building

28

needed for implementation of its mandate. Therefore, we

concur that the African Union (AU) has not generated

enough external supports to strengthen the new African

Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).

Conclusion

Africa is a continent ridden by crises, and thus,

confronted with enormous security challenges in the

post-cold war 21st century. The end of cold war has

instead of reducing conflict in Africa exacerbated it

suggesting that problem is more internal than external

requiring Africa to look more inward to resolve some of

these practices that cause crisis such as ethnicity,

religious intolerance, corruption, crisis of regime

change, etc, rather than blaming movement of small arms

and light weapons. Afterall, if there are no willing

buyers there would not be suppliers, meaning that there

are sufficient internal objective and subjective

conditions fueling crises in Africa. It was under this

state of affairs that African Union in collaboration

with other external actors like EU and in synergy with

sub-regional security organizations in Africa such as

ECOMOG established the new African Peace and Security

Architecture (APSA).

Yet most of these internal problems have not been

tackled simply because those who make the rules are the

very people who break them, refusing to open up the

29

democratic political space under which the aggrieved

can legitimately opposed the government’s policy and

peacefully pursue their aspirations. The APSA itself is

underfunded and under-staffed, and has not leverage on

the possibility of attracting sufficient external

supports to strengthen its organs in the face of

tremendous security challenges in Africa; nor has it

meaningfully engaged these external actors to help hurt

the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in

Africa. Consequently, the APSA was not able to prevent

the most recent conflicts in Africa such as Tunisian,

Egyptian, Libyan and Ivoirian crises. Thus, the

conclusions at which we arrived in the course of this

study include the following; one, that the African

Union’s (AU) new peace and security architecture has

inadequate institutional capacity to pursue its mandate

of conflict prevention, management, resolution and

post-conflict reconstruction; and two, that the African

Union has not generated enough external supports to

strengthen the new African Peace and Security

Architecture (APSA).

30

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