African Peace and Security Architecture

In recent years, global players such as the United States, the European Union (EU) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have noted Africa's growing strategic importance to their respective interests. Among those interests is the increasing importance of Africa's natural resources particularly oil, agricultural raw materials, and mineral resources, but also growing concerns over other peace and security threats such as conflicts, terrorism, cross-border crimes, cyber threats, or piracy. African Union (AU) Member States are developing an African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) to address all these types of threats. This study is a descriptive study in the realm of strategy, focused on creating a holistic and meaningful picture about the mechanisms and purpose of the APSA. The overall intent of this study is to analyze the mechanisms developed, or in a developing stage, by the AU and regional organizations to address peace and security issues in the Africa, with the ultimate goal of contributing to a better understanding of African security context at the strategic level. By using the strategic model of Ends-Ways-Means, this study concluded that the APSA is a viable security strategy to deal with the principal threats in Africa. However, there are still important shortcomings and its effectiveness is dependent upon three critical ingredients: political will of AU Member States, developments at the regional level, and by addressing the external threats much more consistently, covering the security dimension of the APSA in the same extent of its peace dimension.