THE ROLE OF THE AFRICAN UNION IN PROMOTING PEACE AND SECURITY IN AFRICA
African Union (AU) is a key player in the peace and conflict resolution in Africa. The recurrent security challenges in the continent have led the organization to come up with a few structures to enhance conflict prevention, management, and resolution. Under the African Union, with the guidance of Agenda 2063, the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the Peace and Security Council (PSC) were set up to ensure that peace and security programs in the member states are coordinated. Nevertheless, the success of the African Union in conflict resolution is limited by a number of problems, regardless of the efforts. Through a qualitative research design of descriptive research and the use of secondary data, this study investigates the role of the African Union in resolving conflicts and specifically in resolving the crisis in Mali. The results indicate that persistent challenges, which are encountered by the African Union, include poor funding, reliance on foreign donors, lack of political goodwill among member states and the increasingly complex nature of conflicts involving numerous non-state actors. Moreover, the difficulty of coordinating with regional and international partners and bureaucratic inefficiencies of the institutions of the AU also restrict its capacity of operations. The paper suggests that member countries in the African Union should make sure that they pay their financial dues on time so as to minimise dependence on foreign funds. It also emphasizes the need to integrate indigenous African conflict-resolution strategies based on the philosophy of Ubuntu and to enhance the integration between African Union and regional economic communities in order to make peace operations more effective.
Keywords: African Union, Conflict resolution, Dependence, Regional Economic Communities, Peace-keeping,
