AU detachment fuels security collapse in Africa

Solly Rakgomo | Monday February 23, 2026 06:17

The contrast is impossible to ignore. As the United Nations warned in its latest briefing to the AU, the continent is facing an unprecedented wave of insecurity—from the Sahel’s jihadist expansion to Sudan’s civil war, from eastern Congo’s fragmentation to the unresolved tensions inside Ethiopia itself.

Yet the AU’s headquarters remains firmly rooted in Addis Ababa, a city geographically and psychologically distant from the conflict belt stretching across the Sahel, the Horn, and Central Africa. The institution’s physical location has become a metaphor for its political posture: insulated, reactive, and increasingly irrelevant to the crises reshaping the continent. The AU’s detachment is no longer just a bureaucratic flaw. It is now a structural weakness driving Africa’s security collapse.

Tigray: The failure at the AU’s front doorNowhere is this detachment more visible than in Ethiopia, the AU’s host country. During the Tigray war, the Ethiopian government imposed one of the most complete information blackouts in modern conflict. Independent reporting was blocked, humanitarian access was restricted, and journalists and researchers faced intimidation or arrest. Academic analysis has since shown how these tactics concealed atrocities and prevented outside scrutiny. The AU, headquartered just a few kilometres away, was unable to meaningfully intervene. It could not access the conflict zone, could not pressure the government, and could not protect civilians. The institution designed to uphold continental peace was effectively sidelined in its own host nation. This failure is not just symbolic. It exposes a deeper truth: if the AU cannot influence stability in Ethiopia, it cannot credibly claim to manage crises elsewhere. And the danger is not over. Ethiopia’s political settlement remains fragile, and tensions with Tigray continue to simmer. If the country slides back into conflict, it will be a direct indictment of both the AU and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, whose Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for a peace that proved tragically short‑lived. A renewed war would mark one of the most dramatic reversals in modern African leadership and would further erode the AU’s already weakened legitimacy.

The Sahel: The continent’s

fastest-growing conflict zoneWhile the AU deliberated in Addis, the Sahel is experiencing one of the world’s most rapid escalations in violence. According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker, jihadist groups linked to al‑Qaida and the Islamic State have expanded across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, exploiting weak state authority and deepening social fractures. Entire regions have slipped out of government control. Military juntas have replaced elected governments. Regional cooperation has fractured. The AU’s presence in the Sahel is minimal. Its peacekeeping footprint is negligible. Its diplomatic influence has been overshadowed by external actors—Russia’s Africa Corps, Gulf state funding networks, Turkish drone diplomacy, and the remnants of France’s retreating security architecture. The Washington Post recently described the AU as losing control over the continent’s democratic norms and security landscape. That assessment is not exaggerated. The Sahel’s collapse is not an isolated failure. It is the clearest example of the AU’s inability to shape outcomes in the regions that need it most.

A continent in crisis,

an institution out of positionThe UN’s Security Council briefing last year painted a stark picture: Africa is facing a convergence of threats violent extremism, climate‑driven instability, organised crime, food insecurity, and the erosion of state authority. Conflicts are multiplying and spilling across borders. Military solutions are failing. Humanitarian needs are rising. The AU acknowledges these challenges, but its responses remain slow, centralised, and disconnected from the realities on the ground. Addis Ababa is thousands of miles from the Sahel’s frontlines, far from Sudan’s humanitarian catastrophe, and far from eastern Congo’s militia‑ridden terrain. Geography shapes behavior, and the AU’s geography has shaped an institution that is physically present but politically distant.

The AU needs to move beyond AddisIf the African Union is to regain credibility, it must break out of its Addis‑centric model. The institution cannot continue to deliberate on peace and security from the safest corner of the continent while the conflict belt burns from the Sahel to Sudan. A continental body headquartered in Ethiopia cannot afford to be physically and psychologically distant from the regions where Africa’s most violent crises unfold. The AU needs to decentralise its presence and embed itself directly in the places where state authority is collapsing, and civilians are most at risk.

One practical solution is the creation of forward‑deployed mini‑secretariats small, agile crisis hubs stationed inside or near conflict zones. Instead of relying on second-hand reporting and delayed diplomatic missions, the AU could maintain a permanent security presence in the Sahel, with a hub in Niamey or Ouagadougou; a crisis center for Sudan based in Juba or Port Sudan; a Great Lakes monitoring office in Goma; a Horn of Africa stabilisation desk in Mogadishu; and a unit dedicated to the insurgency in northern Mozambique, operating from Pemba. These offices would not replace the Addis Ababa headquarters. They would complement it by decentralising intelligence, accelerating response times, and grounding the AU in the lived realities of conflict. This is how modern security institutions operate. They do not manage crises from afar; they position themselves close enough to understand the terrain, the actors, and the human cost. For the AU, evolving in this direction is not optional. It is the only way to avoid sliding into irrelevance at a moment when Africa’s security landscape is changing faster than the institution designed to protect it.

Africa’s global voice is also missing

The AU’s internal detachment is mirrored by its global marginalisation. Africa hosts most of the world’s peace operations, contributes the largest share of peacekeepers, and represents more than a quarter of UN member states. Yet the continent has no permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This imbalance is not just unfair. It is strategically dangerous. Decisions about African conflicts are made without African voices at the table. The AU’s admission to the G20 in 2023 was a milestone, but it cannot be the endpoint. A permanent African seat on the Security Council is overdue. Without it, Africa will remain a subject of global security decisions rather than a shaper of them.

A union at a crossroads

The AU Summit in Addis Ababa is unfolding at a moment of continental reckoning. The institution faces a legitimacy crisis at home, a credibility crisis abroad, and a structural crisis in its ability to respond to conflict. From Tigray to the Sahel, from Sudan to the Great Lakes, Africa’s security architecture is collapsing faster than the AU can adapt. The continent needs an institution that is present, empowered, and embedded not one that observes crises from a distance. The AU must decentralise. It must reform. It must assert Africa’s place in global governance. And above all, it must confront the uncomfortable truth that geography, design, and political caution have turned it into a bystander in the very conflicts it was created to prevent.