AFRICA HOLDS ‘SILENCE THE GUNS’ SUMMIT

Addis Ababa, Feb. 10: African heads of state gather on Sunday at the headquarters of the African Union for a summit meeting due to focus on how the body can play a more prominent role in resolving conflicts proliferating across the continent. The two-day summit has taken as its theme “Silencing the Guns”, yet AU officials are well aware of their failure to achieve the goal adopted in 2013 of ending “all wars in Africa by 2020”.

In remarks to African foreign ministers ahead of the summit, AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat painted a bleak picture of the continent’s security situation, citing extremist threats stretching from the Sahel to Somalia. The "missed deadline” to silence the guns, he said, “reveals the complexity of the security situation in Africa.”

Though some progress has been made in Central African Republic and Sudan, long-running conflicts in Libya and South Sudan have been joined by new crises from Cameroon to Mozambique. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who will take over from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah alSisi as AU chair, appears attuned to these challenges. In late January, he had warned that conflict “continues to hamper” development.