Conflict & Resilience Monitor – June 2026

The lives and livelihoods of local communities in the borderlands of the Lake Chad Basin are disrupted by both climate change and conflict, which are mutually reinforcing. Conflict undermines social cohesion and public trust and degrades the ability of communities to adapt to the effects of climate change. At the same time, climate change adds additional stresses on food, land and water security, reinforcing the political and socioeconomic conditions that drive armed conflict. In the context of a long history of marginalisation, underdevelopment and weak governance in the region, this conflux can drive people to turn to armed groups in search of alternative governance structures, economic incentives and spiritual and social dignity and meaning.

On 1–2 August 2026, Heads of State will gather in Luanda, Angola for an Extraordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) on Strengthening Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa. The convening is itself a signal – a formal acknowledgement by African leaders that the continent’s peace and security architecture has not delivered the level of prevention that Africa urgently needs. As recently noted by El Ghassim Wane in his briefing to the Peace and Security Council (PSC), on the continent ‘we are witnessing the persistence – and in some cases escalation – of conflicts and tensions across Africa.’ Peace support operations are deployed after displacement has begun. Ceasefires are brokered after civilians have been killed. Transitional justice frameworks are designed after institutions have collapsed. The AU’s Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is sophisticated and increasingly capable, but it remains disproportionately oriented toward managing crises rather than preventing them.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered applications are increasingly designed and deployed to support international conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities. Some data-intensive activities, such as conflict early warning, have seen steady uptake over several decades. More recently, online communication and social media in conflict dynamics, especially in shaping conflict narratives, spreading misinformation and disinformation and accelerating polarisation, has made it necessary to analyse large amounts of data to detect conflict risks and inform peacebuilding programmes and strategies, which AI now plays an irreplaceable role in.

For much of the 20th century, the currency of strategic advantage was simple: oil, steel and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. However, the tectonic plates of national power have shifted. We no longer inhabit a global or political arena where territorial contiguity or the size of a navy dictates the next superpower. Instead, three distinct technological families, advanced computing, biotechnology (biotech) and clean energy, are converging into a single, volatile trinity. Mastery over these domains will not merely determine economic prosperity; it will redefine the nature of warfare, the logic of sanctions and the very architecture of sovereignty. To treat these as mere industrial sectors would be a dangerous error. They are, in fact, the new theatres of conflict; the United States and China understand this all too well.