Africa’s conflict landscape has undergone significant changes over the past decade, shifting from primarily intra-state, politically mediated disputes to regional crises driven by violent non-state actors (VNSAs), illicit cross-border economies, climate-related migration, and digital mobilisation. For scholars and practitioners of peace who have followed the development of policies and frameworks for addressing conflict in Africa over the last one or two decades, a key policy question now arises: are national peace architectures (NPAs), typically centred on peace councils, local peace committees, and insider mediation, still fit for purpose?
We argue here that the NPAs remain useful but are no longer sufficient. To remain effective, the NPAs must adapt to the changing patterns of conflict on the continent. They must be reconfigured into networked and cross-border “infrastructures for peace” that are linked to the regional and continental peace and security frameworks of the regional economic communities (RECs) and the African Union (AU). Additionally, they need to be resourced for anticipatory actions and responses rather than functioning solely as reactive instruments.
From national councils to “Infrastructures for Peace”
The changing conflict landscape in Africa demands a shift in approach, and for Peace Architectures to remain relevant, we must ask: What does the next generation of Peace Architectures require?
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National peace architectures developed from the Infrastructures for Peace (I4P) paradigm link national, provincial, and community-level capacities for dialogue, mediation, and prevention. I4P played a significant role in pioneering a new approach to conflict resolution in Africa, shaping how intra-country conflicts are managed through a consultative, multi-actor, and participatory method that ensures both bottom-up and top-down interaction among various stakeholders in the conflict setting. Countries like Ghana and Malawi effectively applied I4P as a peace framework for resolving politically motivated conflicts. In many countries, I4P were designed and implemented, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to handle domestic electoral tensions, communal disputes, and policy disputes, relying on proximity to elites, moral authority, and insider mediation rather than coercive enforcement powers. Consequently, their operating assumptions, tools, and success metrics were tailored to within-border drivers and actors. They were rarely used to address cross-border and regional conflicts involving violent non-state actors.
The new conflict ecology: transboundary violence and VNSAs
Contemporary conflicts in Africa extend beyond national borders; they are interconnected, transboundary, and regional. The nature and character of conflict actors have evolved due to influences that extend beyond Africa, including connections to global movements of terrorist groups. Moreover, geopolitical dynamics continue to shape how conflicts develop across various spaces and settings, as well as the relationships between different actors (state and non-state) and global powers. In the Sahel, coalitions such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State affiliates operate across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, increasingly impacting coastal states. In the Lake Chad Basin, Boko Haram and ISWAP dynamics and counter-insurgency responses span Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, while in the Horn of Africa, al‑Shabaab’s insurgency in Somalia projects violence into Kenya and influences regional maritime and trade corridors. These theatres share common patterns: cross-border recruitment and taxation, regional logistics, and propaganda ecosystems that outpace national mediation tools.
Contemporary conflicts in Africa extend beyond national borders; they are interconnected, transboundary, and regional. The nature and character of conflict actors have evolved due to influences that extend beyond Africa, including connections to global movements of terrorist groups
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Where national peace architectures fall short
Despite the positive impact of peace architectures across the continent, the current conflict landscape means that they fall short in several areas.
- Mandate and jurisdiction: Most peace councils are constituted to mediate domestic disputes. Their jurisdictional mandate typically stops at the border, with few provisions for joint cross‑border talks, synchronised amnesties, or reintegration schemes.
- Linkage to continental and regional tools: Vertical links from national mechanisms to the AU Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and REC instruments remain uneven, creating spaces that VNSAs exploit.
- From early warning to early action: Although early‑warning networks exist, the lack of delegated authority and flexible finance for rapid, cross‑border prevention and de‑escalation, often reduces these warning systems to reactive, post‑hoc responses.
- Engagement with VNSAs: Many NPAs lack normative and operational guidance for principled engagement with VNSAs (e.g., to broker defection corridors, temporary truces, or community protection compacts) and for linking talks to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration/security sector reform (DDR/SSR) pathways anchored on international, continental and regional AU/REC policy.
Illustrative regional experiences
- The Lake Chad Basin: The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) shows that security responses are already regionalised. Persistent cross-border attacks and coordination frictions highlight why the political and community-level components of peace architecture must also be regional, so that defections, safe-passage arrangements, and reintegration are synchronised across jurisdictions.
- The Sahel and the Coastal Frontline: The spread of JNIM/IS‑linked violence beyond landlocked states toward coastal Benin, Togo, and Ghana underscores porous borders and the need for harmonised dialogue, justice, and stabilisation frameworks, beyond national councils acting alone.
- Horn of Africa: Al‑Shabaab’s cross‑border influence in Kenya demonstrates how insurgent governance, taxation, and intimidation extend along infrastructure and trade routes, surpassing the authority of local peace councils.
Fit‑for‑purpose: what a “next‑gen” Peace Architecture requires
The changing conflict landscape in Africa demands a shift in approach, and for Peace Architectures to remain relevant, we must ask: What does the next generation of Peace Architectures require?
- Legal cross‑border mandates: Update NPA statutes to authorise joint cross‑border mediation cells, shared ceasefire templates, and corridor‑based humanitarian access with neighbouring states, operationalised under AU/REC umbrellas (ECOWAS, EAC, IGAD, SADC).
- Connect directly with APSA: Formalise vertical protocols so that national early-warning alerts trigger pre-agreed early actions with AU/REC counterparts; embed NPA focal points within REC/AU situation rooms for a shared operational picture of the borderlands.
- Principled VNSA engagement playbooks: Provide AU‑aligned guidance on who communicates, about what, and when, covering humanitarian access negotiations, de‑escalation, defection, reintegration agreements, along with victim‑centred accountability and transitional justice.
- Stabilisation linkage and financing: Connect agreements to immediate, visible benefits such as policing and justice services, market reopening, feeder road repairs, and surges in education and health, provided through pooled, flexible, cross-border funds that support early action, not just post-agreement projects.
- Borderland data and anticipatory response: Transform early warning into proactive action by using cross-border incident tracking, mobility and signals, and monitoring mis/disinformation. Additionally, establish thresholds for delegated authorities (e.g., activating mediation teams, opening safe-passage windows, scaling community protection committees).
- Legitimacy and protection: Formalise women’s, youth, faith, and customary authorities from both sides of a border into permanent Peace Corridor Platforms to ensure agreements made in capitals are upheld in the peripheral areas.
Conclusion
National peace architectures effectively addressed conflicts of the past: they professionalised prevention, institutionalised dialogue, and reduced transaction costs for resolving political crises. However, today’s conflicts spill across borders, are not subject to immigration border posts and are driven by actors and economies that ignore national jurisdictions. The way forward is not to abandon NPAs but to transform them into cross-border, networked infrastructures that are legally empowered to operate beyond borders, connected to continental early warning systems, equipped with norms to engage with VNSAs, and financially supported for rapid stabilisation. This approach enables NPAs to better serve their purpose: acting as the link between local legitimacy and regional problem-solving in an era where conflicts and solutions are undeniably transboundary. The UNDP Stabilisation approach in the Lake Chad Basin, using cross-border platforms such as the Governors Forum, exemplifies a new and innovative way of thinking that could be extended to Peace Architectures.
Chika Charles Aniekwe, PhD, is a senior leader in governance, peace, stabilisation, and development. Dr. Ozonnia Ojielo, a distinguished Nigerian development expert, who currently serves as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Rwanda.
