LUANDA SUMMIT TACKLES AFRICA’S DEEPENING SECURITY CRISIS
Millions of civilians across Africa are living through conflicts that continental institutions have so far failed to stop. From Sudan’s devastating civil war to persistent violence in the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and beyond, the human cost of unresolved crises keeps rising. The African Union summit convening in Angola this week places that continental emergency at the center of its agenda, with leaders gathering to confront what has become one of the institution’s most persistent and difficult challenges: preventing conflicts before they spiral into full-scale catastrophes.
The summit’s focus on strengthening conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms reflects the scale of the task ahead. Across the continent, active crises demand immediate attention, yet the AU’s Peace and Security Council continues to struggle with the structural barriers that hamper swift, coordinated response. According to Liesl Louw-Vaudran, Senior Adviser for the AU at the International Crisis Group, the gathering carries particular weight because Angola’s President João Lourenço brings credibility as a champion of peace and reconciliation. Lourenço has been instrumental in regional peace initiatives, notably through the Luanda Process focused on the Great Lakes region, and served recently as AU Chairperson.
The obstacles facing the continental body run deep. Member states frequently disagree on what causes conflicts in the first place and how they should be addressed. More significantly, governments across Africa remain reluctant to allow their own domestic crises to be examined and discussed by continental institutions, citing sovereignty concerns and political sensitivities. Louw-Vaudran pointed to concrete examples: Nigeria initially resisted placing the Boko Haram crisis on the AU agenda, while Ethiopia pushed back against external involvement during the Tigray conflict. “It’s almost embarrassing to admit that your country is in conflict,” Louw-Vaudran observed, capturing the reluctance that often delays intervention precisely when it might be most effective.
That delay has real consequences for ordinary people. Communities caught in conflict zones wait while diplomatic sensitivities are managed and political objections are navigated. The AU Peace and Security Council does regularly address major crises in Somalia, South Sudan, eastern DRC, and the Sahel, but the challenge now is to move beyond reactive crisis management toward more proactive prevention and faster, more decisive action when conflicts first emerge.
The Luanda summit offers a potential turning point. By bringing heads of state together under a unified theme, the gathering could inject greater urgency into peace and security responses. Louw-Vaudran suggested that direct engagement at the presidential level might produce stronger commitments and faster resolutions from the Peace and Security Council, translating political will into concrete action on the ground, where civilians bear the consequences of inaction.
Meanwhile, another critical gap demands attention: coordination between the AU and regional economic communities. These regional bodies sometimes prefer to manage conflicts independently, creating overlapping and sometimes contradictory mediation efforts. In eastern DRC, multiple regional organizations and international actors have launched separate peace initiatives, fragmenting the response at a moment when coherence matters most. Louw-Vaudran emphasized that the AU, as the continent’s overarching institution, should serve as the coordinating body that brings these disparate efforts into alignment, ensuring that mediation initiatives reinforce rather than undermine one another.
The summit’s success will ultimately depend on whether leaders can move beyond the diplomatic gridlock that has long constrained the AU’s conflict prevention work. Turning the theme into substantive change requires not just acknowledgment of the crises but genuine commitment to addressing root causes and the structural weaknesses that allow preventable disputes to grow into continental emergencies. The open question is whether the political will expressed in Luanda this week will outlast the summit itself.