On International Women’s Day, 08 March 2022, AU launched the campaign #WhatAfricanWomenWant to popularise and advocate for the speedy and full implementation of its Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.
The situation in South Africa is a microcosm of what is prevailing in the rest of Africa. The marginalised majority have continued, over these three decades, to live in hope.
The AU has shown global leadership on how to integrate the climate-peace nexus. The March 2021 PSC meeting at heads of state level decided to also develop a common African position on the nexus between climate, peace and security.
Communal conflicts in Africa are multi-dimensional and they vary from state to state. Community led peace initiatives can be inclusive when they involve a wide range of actors including in particular elders, religious leaders, women and the youth.
The goal of Silencing the Guns (STG) was to achieve a conflict-free Africa and rid the continent of all wars and conflicts. Conflicts have persisted, resulting in the STG agenda being extended to 2030, in the hope that by then Africa will have cured itself of the plague of conflict.
Restructuring how Sudan is governed is essential to placing Sudan on the right course towards sustained democracy, especially given the military’s restructuring process that has been in play for over 50 years.
China’s stakes in the region and why Beijing has interests in enhancing its security role in the Sahel.
Youth participation should be inclusive and integrated deeply in dialogues, so young people do not inherit socio-economic and political problems that could have been negated through their involvement.
Africans realised early on in the pandemic there was a tough period ahead – repeating the long pattern of Africa feeling the worst impacts of global dynamics.
Eastern Africa has two primary terrorism hotspots. The first is Somalia. It has experienced continuous instability since 1991, due to clan-based warlords and the lack of a functioning central government. Secondly, similar to Somalia, the eastern part of the DRC has been a hotspot since its own civil war from 1997 to 2003.
On 24 November 2021, news about the ‘Botswana Variant,” now known as Omicron, which is said to have 32 mutations, was reported by Mail Online and other international news media. While the global north is already inoculating booster shots, Botswana is one of the countries in the continent playing catch up trying to attain herd immunity.
Since October 2017, an insurgency emerged in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, resulting in numerous terrorist attacks, claiming nearly 3,000 lives, and displacing some 800,000 people since 2020. In addition to the current military reprisals, a more comprehensive approach should recognise both the fact that the insurgents are the “sons of Mocímboa da Praia” and that at a certain point in time, they became radicalised and turned towards violent extremism.