Persistence of security threats
Although they have significantly decreased in number and intensity since 2001, armed conflicts remain the main threat to peace and security in Africa: at least 19 of the continent’s 54 states are now the prey.
Added to this persistent threat are terrorism and violent extremism. Africa has become the theater of expression of these phenomena, with the Sahelian strip and the region of the Lake Chad basin as its epicenter. In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, terrorist acts have increased at least fivefold since 2016.
Cross-border organized crime and maritime piracy are also on the rise. Of the 375 acts of piracy and robbery recorded worldwide in 2020, the Gulf of Guinea alone has 114, making it the most dangerous area in the world.
Five trends
From these security threats, five major trends emerge and each of them requires specific and complex responses.
1. Since the early 2000s, we have witnessed a change in the nature and extent of conflicts in Africa. Wars between states have gradually disappeared to give way to civil (internal) conflicts. The confrontations to which these conflicts give rise seldom take place on well-defined battlefields. They are intermittent, of varying intensity, and punctuated by brief and fragile ceasefires.
2. Several conflicts have an important historical dimension: they have been active for at least a decade, on average. This is the case in southern Senegal, the Central African Republic, Somalia, Sudan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they extend indefinitely over time.
3. Armed conflicts and violence tend to regionalize due to the transnational activities of armed groups and criminal networks involved. This is the case in the Sahel / Maghreb, Great Lakes and Lake Chad Basin regions, where conflicts have gradually gone beyond the national framework to spread to neighboring countries.
4. Armed actors are multiplied, which raises difficulties in establishing the nature of situations of violence and increases the risk that civilians will be caught in the fighting, in particular because of the addition of front lines. In the Lake Chad Basin, clashes with Boko Haram and Islamic State groups involve five states, as well as an international force. In the Sahel, armed groups have become fragmented and multiplied to such an extent that it is difficult to identify and count those who oppose states and external actors, and those who oppose them.
5. Countries in conflict are the most affected by climate change, particularly because of their weakened adaptive and resilient capacity. In addition, climate change destabilizes states. Indeed, the drying up of water sources, desertification and drought are at the origin of tensions between communities in competition for scarce resources. These tensions fuel the local violence on which criminal groups rely to scale up their actions.
Obstacles to Peace Efforts
The promotion of peace and security in Africa faces many obstacles. One of the most persistent is the lack of predictable and sustainable funding. To cope with this, African states decided in 2016 to endow the African Union Peace Fund with $ 400 million by 2020, a target that has been postponed to 2023 due to delays in the payment of funds. contributions. One year from this new deadline, the Fund has only 179.5 million, less than 50% of the total envisaged.
Moreover, 20 years after the establishment of an African peace and security architecture, certain components, including the African Standby Force, are not yet fully operational. As for the existing mechanisms, they remain poorly coordinated and insufficiently equipped to respond to violent extremism, cross-border crime and cybersecurity risks.
Finally, it is bad governance, human rights violations, impunity, unemployment and the anarchic proliferation of small arms and light weapons that form the most fertile ground for violence in Africa. As long as these scourges are not eradicated, any attempt to pacify the continent will remain ineffective, except for some modest and ephemeral progress.
Closer than you think
Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping in Africa has declined considerably, calling into question the brand image it had forged in this area until the early 2000s. It provides just under 50 peacekeepers. to the 6 major UN peacekeeping operations on the continent. A contribution so modest that it largely explains Canada’s failure to be elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2010 and 2020.