The African Union’s extraordinary summit on conflict prevention and resolution opened today in Luanda, Angola, with a single overriding question on the table: whether member states will act decisively or repeat the pattern of ceremonial gatherings that have allowed the continent’s peace architecture to lose influence across major crises.
The stakes are unusually high. A decade-long review of the AU’s flagship “Silencing the Guns” initiative found that peace and security conditions across Africa have deteriorated markedly. The continent now faces the persistence and expansion of complex armed conflicts, proliferation of violent extremist groups, recurring unconstitutional changes of government, intensified geopolitical competition, and mounting humanitarian and climate pressures. In some regions, the scale and nature of these conflicts pose what amounts to an existential threat to affected peoples and states.
Additional reference context is available at https://amaniafrica-et.org/the-luanda-au-summit-should-declare-a-state-of-emergency-on-the-conflict-situations/.
That reality prompted the 39th ordinary session of the AU Assembly in February 2026 to commit explicitly to “concrete, measurable, and time-bound deliverables, rather than a declarative forum” when it authorized the Luanda summit. The language signals a clear expectation: leaders must move beyond institutional refinements and wish lists.
Solomon Ayele Dersso, Founding Director of Amani Africa, argues the moment demands emergency-level mobilization comparable to the collective action the AU marshaled against COVID-19. Writing ahead of the summit, Dersso contends that African leaders should task the AU Commission Chairperson with establishing an emergency situation room dedicated to the major conflict situations in Sudan, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan. Such a facility, operating under the direct responsibility of the Chairperson and supported by the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, would serve as an instrument for sustained and robust conflict resolution efforts tailored to each crisis.
The case rests on a troubling pattern. Over recent years, the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has struggled to respond to mounting challenges. Leadership on Libya, Sudan, and the DRC-Rwanda file has passed to external actors, while the AU plays, at best, a marginal role in legitimizing processes it did not initiate. This represents a dramatic shift from the APSA’s earlier period, roughly between the early 2000s and early 2010s, when a combination of factors produced more successful conflict prevention and resolution efforts. That era benefited from leadership by figures shaped by the horrors of war, renewed commitment to Pan-Africanism, and a supportive international environment.
The current global context has inverted those conditions entirely. The multilateral system faces deep crisis. Geopolitical tensions are intensifying, and force has become a leading instrument in pursuing national interest. Violations of fundamental international law, including the UN Charter, occur with increasing frequency. As documented at amaniafrica-et.org, widespread violations of multilateral norms and international humanitarian law are “occurring without any fear of accountability, thus with impunity, and are often cloaked in attempts to justify or legitimise them.”
In such times of global disorder, responsibility falls primarily to the continental body and its member states. The AU’s exercise of that responsibility will be measured not by the convening of meetings but by whether the force of decisions and the speed of follow-through match the gravity and urgency of the peace and security emergency facing the continent. Unless African leaders reassert the political purpose of the APSA and reaffirm conflict prevention and resolution as exercises in consequence, the AU risks continuing to drift as a new era of conflicts entrenches and external actors claim more space.
The Luanda summit faces a clear choice. Leaders can adopt decisions that produce ceremonial meetings and processes bereft of political weight, or they can summon the decisiveness required to arrest the continent’s downward spiral in conflict and insecurity. The disconnect between prolonged consultations and the immense suffering inflicted by ongoing conflicts on the ground cannot continue. What happens in the days after Luanda closes, not the declarations made inside it, will determine whether this summit marks a genuine turning point.