ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA. Across Africa, communities living closest to rising tensions are often the first to sense danger, and the last to be heard by the institutions meant to stop violence before it spreads. That gap, between grassroots peacemakers and continental decision-making bodies, sat at the heart of a high-level dialogue held on July 20, 2026, as African nations prepare for a landmark summit on conflict prevention.
The conversation was hosted by Nonviolent Peace Force in partnership with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung AU Cooperation Office and Amani Africa. It brought together representatives from African Union Member States, regional economic bodies, civil society groups, think tanks, academic institutions, and community-level practitioners. The central question: what practical steps could the upcoming Extraordinary Summit of the African Union Heads of State and Government take to revitalise conflict prevention and resolution across the continent?
Mahlet Hagos, Programme Officer at ACCORD, offered a direct assessment. The African Union possesses limited leverage to intervene before conflicts escalate, despite the enormous human, economic, and political toll of waiting too long. Rather than debating whether political will exists, she argued, policymakers should focus on how to create incentives that make conflict prevention a genuine priority for Member States.
The panel, moderated by Lesley Conolly, Regional Policy Advocacy Manager at Nonviolent Peace Force, included Lt. Colonel Domingos Mesquita Sapalo, Defence Attaché at the Embassy of Angola in Ethiopia; Ambassador Jevin Pillay Ponisamy, Permanent Representative of SADC to the African Union; and Chris Ogbonna, Head of Programmes at Nonviolent Peace Force Sudan.
Their discussion kept returning to the same structural problem. Local peace committees, traditional authorities, women mediators, faith leaders, and youth networks are often the first to detect rising tensions and mobilise action before violence takes hold. Yet these community-based actors remain largely disconnected from the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), the continent’s formal prevention framework. Strengthening that link is not simply a matter of coordination. It is essential to building a system that can respond to threats in real time, before lives are lost and displacement begins.
Meanwhile, the financing gap compounds everything else. The African Union’s conflict prevention mechanisms lack adequate resources to function as intended. Without dedicated funding, even well-designed systems struggle to operate, regardless of how sound the underlying policy may be.
The panel explored how partnerships between the African Union and non-state actors could be deepened within the prevention architecture. The goal is not to replace formal diplomatic channels but to ensure that community-level intelligence and early action feed into continental decision-making, and that the contributions of grassroots peacemakers remain visible within APSA. Ordinary citizens in conflict-affected areas have a direct stake in whether that connection is made or missed.
The dialogue fed into ACCORD’s broader work to strengthen how the African Union and regional economic communities respond to complex conflicts. As the Luanda Summit approaches, the discussion produced policy recommendations intended to help African leaders translate the commitment to conflict prevention into institutional change and measurable action.
Prevention, the panel’s work consistently suggested, is more cost-effective and more humane than response. Translating that principle into practice requires both structural reform and a shift in how African governments calculate the political benefits of early intervention. The path forward, as the July 20 dialogue made clear, lies not in inventing new mechanisms but in connecting and properly resourcing the ones that already exist. Whether the Luanda Summit will move that from principle to policy remains the open question.