Conflict & Resilience Monitor – April 2026

Recent border tensions involving Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone highlight enduring structural weaknesses in border governance not only within the Mano River basin but across many West African boundaries. This comes on the heels of the protracted maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Togo, where attempts at resolution have been escalated to judicial arbitration. These incidents and clashes point to a recurring pattern in which contested boundaries often rooted in colonial-era demarcations interact with limited cross-border coordination, localised economic pressures, fragile institutional frameworks and climate change induced movements. Rather than describe these confrontations as mere isolated flashpoints, tensions generated from these occurrences reflect systemic deep rooted governance deficits that continue to challenge state capacity and regional security architectures.

Across West Africa, meaningful youth participation in peace and security remains constrained by deep structural and governance deficits. Despite constituting more than sixty per cent of the region’s population, young people continue to be treated as a security risk rather than as partners in stability. Governments frequently showcase youth in public dialogues, yet decision-making remains dominated by older political and traditional elites. This exclusion persists even as the region faces rising insecurity, from violent extremism in the Sahel to political unrest in coastal states disproportionately affecting young people who lack avenues to influence policy responses.

In my previous analysis, Pre-Electoral Alliances in South Africa: Lessons from the Past, Implications for the Future, I examined the proposed United for Change, (UFC) a merger between Build One South Africa (BOSA), Rise Mzansi, and GOOD Party, cautioning that South Africa’s history of short-lived political party mergers pointed to a likely breakdown. This perspective was grounded not in pessimism, but in precedent. Drawing on concepts such as historical institutionalism and path dependence, often used in political science, the argument was that recurring patterns of fragile alliances and political party mergers make similar outcomes not only possible but probable. The recent decision by these parties to abandon a unified electoral approach to contest the 2026 local government elections (LGEs) and instead contest independently appears to validate those concerns. This invites a deeper analysis into why political mergers, alliances and coalitions in South Africa so often struggle to endure. Since the announcement of the UFC there has been no visible, coordinated programme of action to signal a serious joint electoral project ahead of the 2026 LGEs. According to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity, ‘the three organisations did not sufficiently cohere to form a union’.

The landscape of global engagement with Africa is shifting. President John Dramani Mahama has declared that Africa must ‘pull itself up by its own bootstraps’ and shape the emerging global order rather than remain trapped in what he termed a ‘triple dependency’ on foreign security, donor aid and raw materials. These are not mere words, they showcase a profound geopolitical shift.