Peace-building Through Space-making: The Spatializing Effects of the African Union’s Peace and Security Policies

ABSTRACT

This article is discussing how the peace-building practices of the African Union have distinct ordering and space-making effects. Taking a socio-spatial perspective, it is argued that the peace and security projects through which the African Union, as a spatial entrepreneur, is addressing the scourge of ‘terrorism and violent extremism’ are geared towards (re-)establishing sovereignty that member states have lost in the past over their territories. While the African Union is favouring a spatial format that could be called ‘multiple networked regionalism’, the actual socio-spatial orders that are emerging around Africa’s transregional conflicts are far less clear cut.

KEYWORDS:

• African Union
• peace and security
• regionalism
• regional economic communities
• socio-spatial order
• international partnerships

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) which is generously funding the Leipzig-based Collaborative Research Centre 1199 ‘Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition’, including sub-project B07 on the policies of the African Union and ECOWAS on Mali and Guinea-Bissau, respectively. With regard to the latter, I am deeply indebted to Katharina P.W. Döring and Jens Herpolsheimer for their never-ending curiosity, ever-present rigour and the many shared insights based on their field work and conceptual reflection. In addition, this text also greatly benefited from comments on previous work by, among others, Rita Abrahamsen, Linnéa Gelot, João Gomes Porto, Toni Haarstrup, the late Jim Hentz, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Steffi Marung, Frank Mattheis, Matthias Middell, Arrigo Pallotti, Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs, Charles Ukeje, Antonia Witt, and Dawit Yohannes Wondemagegnehu. All errors and misrepresentations, of course, are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ulf Engel Trained as a political scientist and historian, Ulf Engel is professor of ‘Politics in Africa’ at the Institute of African Studies, Leipzig University. He is director of the graduate programme of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1199 ‘Processes of spatializations under the global condition’ (since 2016). Engel also is a visiting professor at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), and a professor extraordinary in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University. Since 2006 Engel is advising the AU Peace and Security Department in the fields of conflict prevention, early warning and preventive diplomacy.

Notes

1 These are the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA).

2 DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1199, https://research.uni-leipzig.de/~sfb1199/?id=7.

3 On the social construction of ‘terrorism’ see Onuf (2009).

4 On the latter see Latham, Kassimir, and Callaghy (2001).

5 Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.

6 In addition to these two processes, there is also the Yaoundé process on maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea (see AU PSC 2017; Herpolsheimer 2019).

7 In Abyei/Sudan, CAR, Darfur/Sudan, DRC, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan and Western Sahara.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number SFB 1199].