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UJCI Africa-China

China’s Soft-power Status (via UN Peacekeeping) and its Implications for the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Martin R. Rupiya Ph.D.Institute for African Renaissance Studies, University of South Africa

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UJCI Africa-China

China’s Soft-power Status (via UN Peacekeeping) and its Implications for the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Martin R. Rupiya Ph.D.Institute for African Renaissance Studies, University of South Africa

ContentsIntroduction: Rearranging the deck chairs within the international security system with China edging towards the top table ____________________ 4

Research questions and argument ___________________________________ 5Combined – Have these factors moved China to the still-contested notion of a global soft power? ______________________________________ 5

China and international peacekeeping __________________________________ 6What exactly is APSA and ACIRC? __________________________________ 7The African capacity for immediate response to crises ___________________ 9

Findings _________________________________________________________ 9Recommendations_________________________________________________ 10Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 10Abbreviations ____________________________________________________ 11Bibliography _____________________________________________________ 12

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China’s rapid ascendancy to global, soft-power status, manifest through its new role within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and towards its support towards enhancing international peacekeeping, has created conceptual and operational ambiguity by extending that vehicle towards strengthening the African Union’s (AU) collective security mechanisms. On 28 September 2015, President Xi Jinping of China announced a commitment of USD$10 billion over 10 years towards the UN Peacekeeping Fund as well as $100 million spread over five years towards the AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the subsequent 2013 African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACRIC) (Campbell-Mohn E. 2015; Cocodia, J. 2016: 1–11. ).The Chinese expanded footprint within the UNSC and international peacekeeping is occurring in an area that is marginal to the interests of the other P5 members. That, in fact, is a response to the United States President, Barack Obama’s call for increased burden sharing towards United Nations peacekeeping. The United States, even when bearing the heaviest assessed contribution amounting to 28% of the USD$ 8.2 billion

The AU and the RECs should develop clear, coordinated positions on their political and economic goals and the strategies for achieving them in relation to external economic actors, particularly in relation to China in the context of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) … (The African Union at Ten, 2012: 5).

AbstractAs part of China’s newly acquired, soft power status, manifest in its foreign policy and global repositioning since 2015, Beijing has directed support towards Africa’s collective security of African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) established in 2003 and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACRIC) of May 2013. Since the 1990s, the nature of African conflicts have shown the limitations of traditional peacekeeping and its subsequent war-fighting variations that include enforcement as well as seek and destroy mandates. Meanwhile, APSA and ACRIC are not necessarily complimentary notions, with the latter specifically seeking to reassert self-reliance based on the exclusion of external assistance, however described. Given that context, the Chinese initiative, attempting to mediate African conflicts through international peacekeeping, may have misunderstood the context and utility of the tools against the background of Africa’s complex, protracted and increasingly ‘forever wars’. This article argues that Africa’s collective security, led by the AU, is located in the sophisticated and elastic notion of subsidiarity, operating between the states, the subregional security entities and the PSC, in which responsibility is local and only subverted to the centre when all else fails. Where those crises dominate, intervention by the African Peace and Security Council (PSC) finds itself having to balance local and external interests and actors, some of whom may not necessarily subscribe to the APSA framework. This article argues for a joint and mutual China-Africa conceptual re-evaluation of the assistance in order to create opportunities for a substantive relationship with the still emerging African collective security framework. Key words: China, soft power status, UNPKO, African conflicts and collective security, APSA, ACRIC

Introduction: Rearranging the Deck Chairs Within the International Security System with China Edging Towards the Top Table

in 2016, continues to spurn the opportunity to expand its commitment towards international peacekeeping. Curiously, it was at the height of the dominance of the Cold War superpowers when the concept of peacekeeping emerged, propagated by the middle powers advocates, such as Swedish Dag Hammarskjold and Canadian Lester B. Pearson, who successfully conceived the notion of peacekeeping that does not challenge superpower interests and yet seeks to play an even-handed role in the international security system (Bertrand, M. 1995; Bildt, C. 2011: 5).More recently, Obama’s successor, President Donald Trump, has recently succeeded in achieving a reduced, assessed contribution, saving over $600 million in the 2016/17 Financial Year. (Reuters, 29 June 2917). Besides that observation, however, 50 countries responded to Obama’s call to the Peacekeeping Summit hosted on 28 September 2015. Significantly, China’s commitment signalled the third or fourth foreign policy adjustment and fundamental repositioning of its relationship with UNPKO since independence in October 1949. (Matsuda, Y. 2016: 50–51).

China’s Soft-power Status (via UN Peacekeeping) and its Implications for the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) – Martin R. Rupiya Ph.D.

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Research questions and argumentThe research question is informed by a combined set of interrelated queries. The first relates to whether or not the rise of China as a soft power and its expanded role in UNPKO is going to result in the substantive effectiveness of this instrument. Second, to what extent is the new tool able to overcome the unique characteristics associated with the historical flaws of international peacekeeping in Africa? That is in spite of the existing majority effort of the 106,500 – or nine out of sixteen – UN Peacekeeping Operations located in Africa in 2016. Finally, given the peacekeeping donations by China at the two levels, is the offer towards the AU’s collective security apparatuses through APSA and ACRIC going to make a difference? Argument: This article argues that international peacekeeping as a conflict resolution tool, initially crafted under the benign Chapter V and since graduated to enforcement under Chapter VII to include search and destroy with the UN Intervention Brigade in the Eastern DRC and South Sudan, has failed to make an impact in Africa (Muruthi, T. 2016: 155–60; Soure, I. 2016: 123–7; Joffe, G. 2011: 507–32; Cammaert, P. and Blyth, F. 2013). That is also reflected in the protracted nature of establishing the continent’s collective security apparatus since 2002 that has since been confounded by parallel and diversionary concepts that include ACRIC, which was launched in May 2003 after the humiliation in Mali (Dersou, S. 2016: 15–18). Given those policy, evolutional and structural discrepancies, China’s presence and contributions are unlikely to change the status quo. What needs to be held is an informed engagement among security experts, China and the AU’s PSC to recast and relocate the initiative appropriately (Williams, P.D. 2016, 2nd Edn; Clapham, C. 2013).

Combined – Have these factors moved China to the still-contested notion of a global soft power?Global leadership has been argued to result from three dimensions, namely: that of coercion (stick), through the provision of incentives (carrot), or demonstrating attraction (soft power) driving their sources of power through culture, economic strength and political values (Nye, J. 1990, 2004, 2006, 2013). The notion of a soft power emerged during the 1990s when leading scholars on the subject sought to differentiate between the traditional war-fighting hard power, dominant during the Cold War and the more humane, soft power authority associated with civil society leaders such as

Gandhi in India and Dr Martin Luther King in the US who used moral persuasion or (soft) power to influence positive change (Mustonen, J.J. 2010). Accordingly, those scholars argue that:

Soft power is the ability to alter the behaviour of others – through attraction – in order to get what you want through their transformation. (Wuthnow, J. 2008; Nye, J. 1990, 2004, 2013; Dahl, R. 1961).

Furthermore, the notion of soft power has also been cited as that central position emerging from ‘balancing both hard and soft power’ while placing emphasis on the liberal traditions without completely discarding the importance of military power. Not surprisingly, that middle ground, while attempting to provide some theoretical distinction from hard power, has instead created conceptual confusion (Nye, J. 2004). Reducing the concept to be susceptible to charges by sceptics who have dismissed the notion of soft power as a ‘vehicle of fallacy’, whereas the reality is that ‘soft power – is merely a velvet glove concealing an iron hand’ (Gray, 2011; Chong, A. 2005, 2007; Ferguson. 2004: 24). China’s behaviour in the South China Sea has revealed a wielding strength and preparedness to go to war (Minxin Pei, J.K. 2006).In the case of China, a number of analysts have concluded that the country was either seeking or has since reached soft power status in the last decade (Mustonen, J. J. 2010; Gill B. and Huang Y. 2008: 17–36; Wuthnow, J. 2008; Kurlantzick, J. 2007). Certainly, in seeking an improved profile as a member of P5 in the UNSC through UN peacekeeping since 2015, historically, China is going through its third iteration of its relationship with UN peacekeeping. The first period of the differing relationships was during the 1950s under Chairman Mao until after the 1970s Cultural Revolution when the PLA actually fought US-led peacekeepers in the Korean War of the 1950s while also confronting the Russians and entering into relationships with several African liberation movements (Thrall, L. 2015: 16, 43–47; Kabemba C. 2012: 162–193). The second iteration was after 1971 when UNGA had voted for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to replace Taiwan – Republic of China (ROC) and the tentative transformation of the New Historical Missions towards maintaining world peace and common development that began at the end of the 1990s and appeared to solidify after 2004 (Thrall, L. 2015: xiv).The third and contemporary phase of China’s relationship with the UN peacekeeping appears to have had its genesis not only in the rapid rise of all spheres to global scale but particularly the central role of the PLA in the domestic and increasing foreign policy, strategy,


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Source: UNMISS/JC Mcllwaine.

and roles as evaluated by the PLA itself, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Public Security as sanctioned by the CCP’s Central Military Commission chaired by President Xi Jinping (Matsuda, Y. 2016: 50–51). To that end, the CCP seeks to modernise the PLA in its domestic roles, structure and organisation as well as reposition the same to enter and participate in the global security arena. That would require strategic focus, re-equipping, modernising and training with an expectation of exposing units to foreign service and interactions with other professional militaries.

In a parallel process, the new military reforms transforming the PLA from a land-based to a mobile force – after shedding 70% or 300,000 of mainly land-based units and leaving a 2 million-strong force organised under five new strategy military regions from the previous seven. That reorganisation was scheduled to be completed by January 2016. The reforms tightened control under a newly created joint command that brought together ground, air, artillery and naval forces organised around five new strategic military regions, reduced from the previous seven.

China and International PeacekeepingBoth at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and Peacekeeping Summit held on the morning and afternoon of 28 September, 50 countries made various commitments with Colombia offering a 1,500 force ‘on condition that its internal security situation remained stable’; Sierra Leone offered 500 troops, split evenly between men, while the United Kingdom announced an increase of several score for its mission in Somalia. But President Xi’s announcement stole the show, making him the man of the moment’ as he:

… pledged USD$ 1 billion over 10 Years to the

UN Peace and Development Fund; offered to

train 5,000 peacekeepers from other countries over

the next five years, and committed a police standby

force of 8,000 available to the UNPKO in 30 days.

At the end of the Peacekeeping Summit, a total of an extra 40,000 troops had been committed to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and, much more importantly, the infantry-heavy peacekeeping environment on the African continent was set to be transformed, augmented by helicopters, engineers, and other technical assistance from Beijing (UNPKO). For the African Union, President Xi:

… pledged $100 million over five years (2016–2020)

for the AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture

(APSA) and the African Capacity for Immediate


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Response to Crises (ACRIC), as well as providing a

helicopter squad for peacekeeping operations in Africa (Matsuda, Y. 2016: 50–51; Campbell-Mohn, E. 2015).

In extending the direct support to African collective security apparatuses through the instrument of UN Peacekeeping, China was engaging with the AU’s most challenging dimension: that of managing continental peace and security without the mandate from member states (Charles and Kupchan, C.A. 1995: 52–61).While the Chinese offer to the AU’s collective security apparatuses is welcome, a closer examination of the implications of international peacekeeping towards responding to African conflicts through APSA and ACIRIC raises policy and structural questions and challenges the appreciation of China regarding the context and nature of African conflicts to which it hopes to respond.

What exactly is APSA and ACIRC?The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is the African Union’s collective security mechanism that succeeds the OAU’s Conflict Prevention Mechanism signed in Cairo in July 1993 (Esmenjaud, R. E. 2014: 12). Because African states are reluctant suitors in collective security, its objective and purpose is both explicit with dimensions of the unstated. First, APSA as a concept is located in the universal concept of subsidiarity ‘drawn from the Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII in 1891’. (Cocodia, J. 2016: 11). An aspect borrowed by the European Union in the reaching the

Maastricht Treaty of 1991 and adopted by the AU in

2007, this principle that regulates powers of the central

Source: Renwick, D. and Julia Ro

authority in its relationship with its units based on

giving priority and delegation to the local and only

triggering intervention from the centre when all else

fails (Cocodia, J. 2016: 11).In practice, subregions, or the RECs and Regional Mechanisms (RMs), took advantage of the loose leadership arrangement and in fact blocked the AU’s PSC from playing a role in the conflicts in Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, more recently, Burundi. In response and after recommendations from the periodic assessments and evaluations, in 2008 the AU motivated for the signing of operational memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with the RECs and RMs.Second, the idea of collective security propels members to sign up at the subregional level, resulting in the default elimination of inter-state conflict. In that case, any state-to-state misunderstandings are ventilated on the direct platform provided to enhance diplomatic dialogue. Finally, the notion provides space for subregional hegemons spread throughout the five regions to ‘naturally play a leading role’, given obvious disparities on the economies of scale, demographic advantages and other attributes.Established in 2003, against the background of the genocide of April 1994 in Rwanda and the pogroms during the mid-1990s in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Somalia, the instrument was provided with a more robust mandate ‘with the right to intervene where war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity occur – according to Article 4 (h) of the Constitutive Act (APSA Road Map, 2014: 12–13). Significantly, those revealed the limitations of international peacekeeping that had


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arrived with its notions of neutrality, impartiality and consent that were soon abandoned for a wholesale enforcement under Chapter VII. Its multidimensional purpose in both policy and practice is explicit, silent, and implied. Organisationally, APSA is elaborated as composed of the five components – sometimes treated interchangeably: 1) the Peace and Security Council, 2) the Panel of the Wise, 3) the Continental Early-warning Unit, 4) the African Standby Force, which also includes the Military Affairs Committee, and 5) the AU Peace Fund. At the technical and field command level, in May 2003, the ASF Policy Framework envisaged:

Development in two phases: from 2005 until 2010.

15,000 soldiers operational capability (FOC)

straddling, first phase, a strategic-level management

capacity capable of conducting one or two parallel

missions. In parallel, regional economic communities

establish brigade-sized regional standby forces:

the North Africa Regional Standby

Brigade (NASBRIG);

the East Africa Standby Brigade (EASBRIG);

the Force Multinational de l’Afrique

Centrale (FOMAC);

the Southern Africa Standby

Brigade (SADCBRIG); and

the ECOWAS Standby Brigade (ECOBRIG)

(Dersou, S. 2016: 13; Mulugeta, G.B. and De Waal, A. 2016: 5–6; Karock, U. 2014: 4).On the launch of the APSA policy framework, in May 2003, the neatly packaged geographic idea was assailed with fresh requests, leading to its partial disintegration. The commercial enterprise of COMESA also applied for membership, which was also extended to the Community of Sahel-Sahara states (CEN-SAD), the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), and the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA) in a process that revealed countries with overlapping memberships, such as Tanzania. Furthermore, in subsequent assessment and evaluation tests in 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2016, as well as the recommendations leading to the launch of APSA Road Map, 2016–2020

in Harare during November 2015 by the PSC, revealed that APSA had become abandoned, orphaned from birth with only selected components working and not the rest. In North and Central Africa, the structures of the ASF remained moribund (The AU Assessment: 2010 – Fisher Report; Mulugeta, G.B. and De Waal, A. 2015: 1–4). It is also significant that the AMANI1 Africa – Execersise – aimed at testing the operational

capability of ASF standby units has continued to miss its targets (Mulugeta and De Waal, 2015: 2). Furthermore, in the interim period since the establishment of the APSA, parallel and competing concepts have been floated – such as the Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) and the association of the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) and African Governance Architecture (AGA) – designed to provide security mechanisms on the continent and succeeding to cloud and direct attention towards the singular efforts to strengthen APSA (Cocodia, J. 2014: 17). On paper, APSA remains the political central feature under the PSC, and yet, Article 4 (h) has never been invoked in the operationalisation of the African Standby Force, even where opportunities beckoned (Dersou, S. 2016: 14–17; Mulugeta, G.B. and De Waal, A. 2015: 2). APSA has, therefore, remained theoretical, aspirational, silently effective and seeming ineffectual in practice, lacking coherence and integration in some regions. Only in 2008, more than five years from inception, did the PSC succeed to reach a MoU with ‘willing RECs/RMs on the relationship governing the centre and the periphery. In conclusion, the utility of APSA, benefiting from the Chinese military contributions of US$20 million per year over five years and the opportunities to join other global nations to take advantage of the 5,000 forces to be trained in China, is unlikely to materialise as what has emerged is only partial subregional acceptance leaving out Central and North Africa. For now, APSA lacks and requires political will and buy-in from member states drawn from all the regions to begin to register its importance. Furthermore, Africa’s West, Central and the Horn have shown peculiarities – paraphrased below – that have, combined, blunted the international peacekeeping tool. In West Africa, during the 1990s, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the UN Peacekeeping Missions introduced, for the first time, enforcement under Chapter VII. In the most volatile region on the continent:

The Horn of Africa … an extremely complex region … potential problems … environment extremely forbidding, but vast differences – ranging from the plateaus in northern Ethiopia to the Somali scrub – create different kinds of societies: pastoralist and agricultural, with dramatically contrasting values and ways of life. The Horn … frontier between two of the world’s major religions, Islam and Christianity, encompasses a range of ethnic groups, languages, and cultures, differing patterns of colonial conquest, creation of artificial states, and incorporation of the region into the global economy – as well as global conflicts (Manger, L.O. 2015: 1, citing Clapham, C. 2013).1 Swahili name for peace.


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Finally, in Central Africa, the region has spurned APSA, and instead, established G5 + France with terms of reference that are parallel and compete with the continental organisation (Maiga, I. 2017).

The African capacity for immediate response to crisesIn the first eight months of 2011, the North was engulfed with what is now known as the Arab Spring, when youths used social media to express disquiet with the governing elite (Joffe, G. 2011: 507). Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya were all affected, resulting in the death of Muammar Mohammed Abu Quaddafi on 11 October the same year. Upon his demise, thousands of Tuaregs and Berbers who had been employed as elite guards found themselves isolated, ostracised and threatened in the violent chaos that ensued. Particularly in Libya, the majority were from the sub-Saharan states of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger and Chad (Soure, I. 2016: 123–30). Exploiting on earlier grievances and an uncompleted peace process reached during the 1990s, well-armed Tuaregs rebel groups under the Movement for the National Liberation of (MNL) AZAWAD raced down south, riding land cruisers – ‘technicals’ – and were soon threatening the capital Bamako, Timbuktu, and the northern city of Kirdal, taking control of nearly a million square kilometres of territory (Soure, I. 2016: 123; Cocodia, J. 2016: 5). A dispute on the nature of reaction between President Amadou Toumani Toure and his military resulted in his overthrow.Meanwhile, given the APSA disjuncture between the Sahelian states and West Africa, ECOWAS’s African Standby Force, comprising Nigerian and Chadian troops, conceived as AFISMA was slow to organise and react. Devoid of capacity and resources, African member states appealed ‘twice’ to the UN for assistance and the decision to support was not forthcoming (Cocodia, J. 2015: 3–5). Faced with the urgent deadlines and the presence of France that had been invited on a bilateral on the ground, the AU PSC negotiated ‘a lead role for APSA and the Malian military while accepting the international flag and forces who were concerned about the morphing of the MNL to become part of the war on terror’. The result was the cumbersome African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA), which provided legitimacy and a united front for both ECOWAS and APSA. Ten years after inception, there was no hiding the humiliation and lack of capacity and coherence exhibited by the ASF West African element at the first opportunity it was provided to deploy. Meanwhile, the limited MNL demands for self-autonomy expanded and were now influenced by al-

Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and the Islamic States ISIS – known as the Daesh – who were demanding a caliphate covering over 60% of Mali and large tracts in Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso. Faced with the real possibility of extinction, the administration in Bamako appealed to France for intervention. Through UN Resolution 2085, passed in January 2013, France deployed Operation Serval, supported by the European Union and the United States and, within weeks, all the major towns that had fallen were retaken. That dramatic reassertion of the status quo, led by an external former colonial power embarrassed African states. That, in spite of the fast-moving pace that had seen MNL influence rise with its association with AQIM and ISIS or Daesh, threatening a growing globalised war.In May 2013, South Africa led the way for a fresh initiative that would provide for African Capacity for the Immediate Response to Crises (ACRIC) working with a handful of countries such as Algeria, Chad, Tanzania – and Uganda, Ethiopia and Nigeria lending public support. ACRIC’s objectives were to set up a separate 5,000-strong combat force of whom 1,500 would be available for rapid deployment. The underlying ideological rationale for ACRIC was to create a self-reliant security structure without association with external players, and solely supported by member states for over three months (Warner, 2015: 60; Coconia, J. 2016: 5). Furthermore, ACRIC would be comprised of:

Three tactical battle groups comprised of three infantry battalions of 850 troops each, an artillery support group and light armor elements, as well as an air wing of 400 troops, which would include strike aircraft and helicopters and logistical support, including strategic airlift capabilities. The unit would have a 10-day notice of movement (Warner, J. 2015: 60–62).

Therefore, ACRIC had emerged, ten years later, as a response to the deficiencies of APSA and the humiliating experience of the ‘return of the French’ in Mali (Warner J. 2015: 58–59).

FindingsThis paper has traced the internal growth in politics, economics and security sectors in China, sufficient to propel the country to seek expansion of its position in the global arena. This discussion has focused on its expanded role in international peacekeeping and increased contributions to UNPKO, complimented by a new role for the PLA, as peacekeepers. While that top-down strategy also paid some attention to the struggling collective security apparatuses of APSA and ACRIC, the evidence suggests that


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Beijing’s impact is unlikely to enhance the capacity or effectiveness of both. Some of the reasons include the lack of utility of the UN Peacekeeping instrument, even with Chapter VII against the nature of the African conflicts as witnessed in the Central African Republic, Mali, South Sudan, Darfur, the Ivory Coast, Somalia and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: the nature of the African conflict theatre that has produced protracted, complex, forever wars; the conceptual and structural journey that APSA continues to travel amidst competing initiatives, including ACRIC, reflecting a deep lack of political will amongst member states; the absence of a reciprocal think tank capacity to engage with the Chinese donations, and other reasons. For China, adopting the UN Peacekeeping as the preferred instrument of intervention clearly shows a strategic miscalculation and the absence of a concrete appreciation of the journey that APSA has travelled since 2002. APSA has no structures in the Maghreb-North Africa; is absent in the G5 + 1 Sahelian region, and has been found wanting against Boko Haram.

In the same vein, APSA’s lack of capacity when the crisis in Mali broke out in late 2012 and early 2013, and the centrality of French involvement, resulted in the angry reaction of a select group of member states, led by South Africa, embarrassed and humiliated by the absence of any response to the plight of huge civilian fatalities in that emerging conflict. It is significant to note that this aspiration has since to happen. However, for China to then offer support to a group that emerged, significantly against external assistance in the sensitive arena of African security, is a misnomer.

Recommendations This article makes three recommendations for consideration:1. The first is to urge for a common understanding of the

limitations of international peacekeeping on African conflicts.

2. Second is to review the context in which China – Africa’s new found relationship – can be adequately strengthened in the area of collective security using politically acceptable instruments.

3. Finally, to develop an appropriate strategic posture, training and concept of operation that results in the effective subregional and continental alignment with China’s growing soft-power status.

ConclusionThe absence of conceptual clarity around Africa’s collective security is likely to fail to take advantage of the donation made by China towards APSA and ACRIC at the end of September 2015. With the reduction of funding from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), especially the US under President Donald Trump, to rely on the instrument of UN Peacekeeping will present challenges in dealing with the nature of African conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Darfur and, more recently, in South Sudan. To go forward, this discussion urges for an empirically grounded review of the failures of APSA since its inception and, drawing guidelines from the APSA Roadmap 2016–2020, isolates thematic areas for support. With more than a year gone after the dramatic offer was made during the Peacekeeping Summit, analysts are still to learn from the PSC where the annual 20 million has been directed to enhance Africa’s collective security. Only time will tell.


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List of AbbreviationsAA I Amani Africa IAA II Amani Africa IIACRIC The African Capacity for Immediate Response to CrisisAPSA The African Peace and Security Architecture Components:

PSC: Peace and Security Council Panel of the Wise CEWS: Continental Early-warning Unit ASF: African Standby Force together with the Military Affairs Committee APF: African Peace Fund

AU African Union CAR Central African Republic CCP Chinese Communist PartyCEN-SAD Community of Sahel – Saharan StatesCEWS Continental Early-warning SystemEAC East African CommunityECCAS Economic Community for Central African StatesFOCAC Forum on China-Africa CooperationHorn of Africa East, Central, and lower northern African states IGAD Intergovernmental Authority for DevelopmentIMF International Monetary FundPLA Chinese People’s Liberation Army PRC People’s Republic of ChinaRECs Regional Economic and Security Communities RMs Regional Mechanisms ROC Republic of China (Taiwan)UMA Union du Maghreb ArabeUNGA United Nations General Assembly UNPKO United Nations Peacekeeping OperationsUNSC United Nations Security Council – P5 Permanent MembersYuan/Renminbi Chinese currency


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