At the 21st Extraordinary Session of the African Union Heads of State and Government in Luanda last Sunday, President John Dramani Mahama said what needed to be said. He called for sustainable, predictable and African-owned financing for our peace and security.
It was a timely intervention at a summit convened specifically to adopt a Decision, Action Plan and Implementation Matrix on Conflict Prevention and Resolution, against the backdrop of persistent conflicts from Sudan to the Sahel, from Eastern DRC to Somalia.
For too long, Africa has spoken about African solutions to African problems while waiting for someone else to pay for them.
The truth is, African ownership of peace must be matched by African ownership of its financing.
The Daily Graphic fully endorses this position by President Mahama.
The African Union has built an impressive peace and security architecture on paper — the Peace and Security Council, the African Standby Force, the Continental Early Warning System, the Panel of the Wise, and the AU Peace Fund. But in practice, this architecture is underfunded, uncoordinated and overly dependent on external partners.
When conflict erupts in Mali, Burkina Faso or Sudan, the AU often has to appeal to the European Union, the United States or the United Nations to fund its response.
By the time it receives the money, people have died, and the conditions attached to external funding may not align with African priorities.
As President Mahama noted, we have welcomed progress in operationalising the AU Peace Fund towards its $1 billion target, but progress is too slow.
The Fund was supposed to be financed by a 0.2 per cent import levy on eligible imports into Africa, a decision taken by Heads of State in 2016.
Ten years later, only a handful of countries are implementing it consistently.
The result is a fund that cannot finance rapid deployment. This is unacceptable.
Africa imports over $600 billion worth of goods annually.
A 0.2 per cent levy, if fully implemented, would easily raise over $1 billion a year for peace alone.
It is not that Africa cannot pay for its own peace. It is that we have not had the political will to collect what we agreed to collect.
President Mahama’s call for accelerated implementation of the resource mobilisation strategy, including effective application of the levy and mobilisation from African financial institutions such as Afreximbank, the African Development Bank and the private sector, is therefore not just sound economics.
It is strategic sovereignty.
The President’s second point deserves equal attention: early warning must detect not only imminent threats but also underlying grievances, and it must translate into early action.
Africa does not lack early warning. We have early warning systems in the AU, ECOWAS, and the other regional groupings. What we lack is early action.
We see the signs — exclusion, youth unemployment, chieftaincy and farmer-herder conflicts, election rigging, corruption — but we wait until guns start firing.
Peace is not just the absence of war; it is the presence of justice, jobs and inclusion.
A continent where 60 per cent of the population are under 25 and unemployed is sitting on a time bomb.
Early warning should flag that.
The Action Plan adopted in Luanda must therefore move beyond military deployment to address governance, inequality and climate-induced resource competition.
The implementation matrix must have clear responsibilities, timelines and measurable indicators, as Ghana proposed.
We have spoken on this topic for too long. It is time to move from words to action.
President Mahama made an important conceptual connection.
The Accra Reset, launched to promote self-financing of health, shows that Africa can finance its own priorities if it commits levies and pooled funds.
The same logic applies to peace.
The Luanda summit was timely and necessary. But summits do not bring peace; implementation does.
Africa must now implement the 0.2 per cent levy, capitalise the Peace Fund to $1 billion and beyond, make early warning lead to early action, and ensure that our peace is financed by us, led by us, and owned by us.
President Mahama has thrown the challenge.
It is now up to all 55 member states to show that we are willing to pay the price for the peace we so desperately need.
