A two-day meeting of African leaders got underway on Saturday as the continent struggles with political unrest, wars, coups, and tensions within the region.
Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union Commission, expressed concern about the violence engulfing several countries in Africa and other areas of the world prior to the meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
In addition to pointing out the “eternal tensions” in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the “terrorist danger” in the Sahel, the ongoing instability in Libya, and the threat posed by jihadists in Somalia, Faki declared that Sudan was in “flames.”
“The resurgence of military coups, pre- and post-electoral violence, humanitarian crises linked to war and/or the effects of climate change are all very serious sources of concern for us,” he told African foreign ministers on Wednesday.
A mini-summit aimed at finding ways to relaunch the peace process for the DRC — including the Congolese leader and his Rwandan rival — opened Friday on the sidelines of the main AU meetings and was due to continue on Saturday.
But the 55-member bloc has long been criticised for being ineffectual and taking little decisive action in the face of numerous conflicts and power grabs.
“I doubt that there will be any strong decisions,” said Nina Wilen, director of the Africa programme at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations think tank in Brussels.
The pan-African body has so far had “very little influence on countries that have suffered recent coups”, she said, adding that member states did not want to set precedents that could clash with their own interests.
