The Future of the African Union’s Security Practices-Some Observations from a Recent Conference Held in Uppsala, Sweden: “African Security and Unbridled Militarization? New Approaches to African Peace and Security Governance”

African Union Headquarters. Photo courtesy of UNAMID via Flickr Commons. (License)

The African Union (AU) is swiftly emerging as a significant security and peacebuilding actor on the international scene. It has a clear role, as a regional body under the UN Charter Chapter VIII), to deal with situations constituting threats to international peace and security. However, as continental integration accelerates, several scholars of African peace and security studies have noted worrisome trends in the African Union's practices regarding security and growing militarization.[1] These trends also constituted the main research theme for conference "African Security and Unbridled Militarization? New Approaches to African Peace and Security Governance," held from November 22 to 23, 2017 in Uppsala, Sweden. The conference convened leading researchers in the field of African security governance, who made a number of important observations on African peace and security.

Commentary on Conference Themes and How They Could Shed Light on Emerging Research Questions

Despite the AU's recently-adopted document "Silencing the Guns," outlining a vision aimed at ending all wars in Africa, preliminary observations by conference participants suggest that the Union is increasingly resorting to militarized practices in dealing with continental threats. Indeed, two preliminary trends were noted in this regard by conference participants: the increased use of military force in Africa and institutional practices of resorting to military solutions to deal with continental security challenges in Africa.

 Increasing Use of Military Force in Africa

From the Cold War to the present, the African security landscape has been characterized by the confluence of global and local actors, different forms of securitization, and militarization narratives and practices. However, as scholars at the conference presented — on basis of their ongoing own research — the AU — in dealing with continental security challenges, has increasingly come to adopt an approach that relies firmly on the use of military force. War-making, as a practice, has increasingly been employed in the construction of political authority, not only within the AU framework, but also by several African states (such as Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and Ethiopia – to mention a few). As a consequence, several previously non-securitized challenges in Africa are now becoming militarized and subject to militarized solutions. Concrete examples of the use of the conventional security sector (defense) to deal with non-conventional security challenges include the management of the Ebola epidemic, HIV/AIDS, cholera epidemics, environmental pollution, counterterrorism practices, counter-drug-trafficking actions, and management of migration.

An explanation for the growing militarization, as were discussed at the conference, was the AU's own fundamental lack of institutional capacity and financial resources for responding to continental security challenges. The financial deficiency creates a dependency on external actors to back African states in order to counter security threats, who many times favor military responses to African challenges. In many cases, external actors have their own agenda and military solutions are granted as a quick-fix solution. However, this external support, as noted by a number of conference participants comes at a high price for Africa: the loss of African political and economic ownership as well as the growing, militarization of non-military security challenges, and aggravation of non-militarized contexts.

First, African states lose ownership of their own security agenda. For instance, as a result of financial asymmetry, the AU is not likely to be in full control of what security challenges to address, or how they are to be addressed once outside capacity support is provided. As external actors have their own agenda military solutions are many times seen as effective instruments to deal with security challenges. Moreover, the resort to military action is also many times seen as financially less expensive than other forms of interventions, for instance by engaging in long-term development support to address root causes.

Second, non-military issues tend to be securitized. As noted by several conference participants, an increasing number of empirical observations suggest, external actors' interventions in Africa can aggregate existing security challenges by making them more complex. For example, rather than treating certain phenomena as social problems and engaging them within a social sector context, issues are being encapsulated into the military sector. This, in turn, diverts resources and attention from public sectors that need the most support. For instance, the challenges posed by the Ebola crisis in parts of Africa were being tackled in a militaristic way, during which soldiers were sent to address the epidemic without a long-term strategy to deal with the root cause: i.e., the collapsed health sector. Thus, rather than investing in the health sector, money was loaded into the conventional defense and security sector.

Third, given the lack of financial capacity to confront larger security challenges, the AU at times depends on external powers to support its activities. For instance, by 2020 it is expected that the AU peace and security fund would require at least USD$ 400 million to cover for costs in dealing with some key interventions across the continent. However, as the fund is currently structured, the UN supports nearly 75 percent of its fund in addition to external parties. Only a tiny portion of the fund is being financed by African Governments, creating asymmetry. As a consequence, external actors can claim certain types of actions and interventions across Africa. In turn then, as was noted in several conference papers, by importing external support into local settings, local social dynamics can be disturbed. For instance, militarized solutions may fuel violence and steer local dynamics towards becoming militarized. External actors' financial and military dealings with local armed ethnic groups in Libya's conflict are an example (compare for instance US, France, UK, and Italy's military engagement in Libya).

At the same time, having noted this trend, scholars at the Uppsala conference also argued that African states and the AU are not passive agents in such a global scheme. Attesting to this point is the active engagement of the AU and African states in regional peace processes, the formation of new regional partnerships, and the appropriation and manipulation of global discourses for self-serving purposes. Thus, it is not simply the case that African governments are surrendering sovereignty to external actors to deal with security challenges that they are not able to deal with themselves. On the contrary, external engagement is often fiercely resisted to avoid dependency. However, Africa continues to be in financial asymmetry with other global powers. Even if African states and the AU seek to master their own destiny, the AU continues to fall victim to the militarized agendas of stronger external powers in Africa. An excellent example of this is the counterterrorism and militarization practices in Mali, where several security actors, including France and the AU, are working in parallel with the Malian states in dealing with local insurgencies.

Future Orientation of the African Peace and Security Regime?

Over the past decades, Africa has seen an increased number of external interventions, with a clear pattern of militarization. But how, then, can the AU and African Heads of State go about an institutional build-up without it being overtaken by a militarization agenda? In this regard, the Uppsala conference participants mentioned different strategies that both deal with the AU's own security culture, as well as the security of African states by external actors.

One proposal suggested the need for African states to ensure that civil control of the military is put at the forefront of security governance policies. In this respect, citizens should be given tools to hold the military more accountable. This could reduce the reflexive use of military practices in response to non-conventional security threats on the continent.

Moreover, some scholars at the conference suggested the need for the international community, the AU, and African countries to invest more in democratic practices in Africa. As several papers at the conference testified to, there were considerable empirical observations suggesting that weak democratic practices in Africa, combined with securitization and militarization, have had a tendency to lay the ground for violent armed conflicts.

Further, during the conference it was also proposed that the AU, its regional organizations, and member states should do better to respect the norms enshrined in the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). These security norms are not intended to push for militarizing practices in dealing with security challenges, but to recognize the nuances of different types of security concerns on the continent.

As for future research on militarization, some conference participants highlighted the need for academia to expand the study of security in Africa by further exploring social and anthropological dimensions of militarization within African institutions. The need for a clear methodological framework for studying militarism and its processes was seen as central to the field's growth in academia, as several studies have treated the AU as a unitary institution, without reflecting the black-box processes that go on inside it.

Moreover, some of the scholars noted the need for further research pertaining to non-militaristic engagements in the process of African securitization; the impact of different approaches to conflict prevention mechanisms on security/insecurity in Africa; the civil-military relationships; the stance of African development partners (EU, USA, etc.) on African militarization and securitization; and comparative studies on militarization and securitization.

Lastly, previous research has highlighted trends in militarization and securitization, yet little focus has been placed on providing viable explanations as to why they tend to occur. As such, several Uppsala conference participants called for the need for a more theoretical informed framework that can provide these explanations.

Dr. Mikael Eriksson is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, and holds a PhD in Political Science. He can be reached at phdmikaeleriksson@gmail.com 

This blog post was written by the research program, AU Waging Peace? Explaining the Militarization of the African Peace and Security Architecture, funded by the Swedish Research Council. See the project website: http://nai.uu.se/research/finalized_projects/au-waging-peace-explainin Mikael Eriksson holds a PhD in Political Science. He can be reached at phdmikaeleriksson@gmail.com

[1] Mikael Eriksson and Linnéa Gelot, "Between Words and War: Militarism and African Security" (presentation, African Security and Unbridled Militarization? New Approaches to African Peace and Security Governance, Uppsala Sweden, November 2017).