 Hello, everyone. Still morning, yes. And at least I'm having a session when you've all just had coffee and breakfast, but going towards lunch. Not the best session, but we'll be able to have a good conversation. My name is Maria Kisumbi. I'm very pleased to moderate the session forging multilateral and collective human security partnerships. I don't know if some of you were there for the previous session. The goals for this session, I hope, building from the last session, is restoring faith in multilateralism, restoring faith in the African Union, because the last conversation, I think many of you left out questioning what's the role of multilateralism in addressing the security challenges on the continent. I have the pleasure of inviting my colleagues to join this session. We have Ms. Alexander Davis, senior policy advisor at the US Mission to the United Nations. Allie Davis, please join us here at stage. Then we have Mr. Josh Massavi, senior fellow at Hudson Institute. And then we have Desiree Asokbavi, Francophone Africa Director at One Campaign. At least some handclap for our team. Before we begin our conversation, I'd like to set the scene by providing a brief background. Africa's security landscape defies easy generalization. And we saw this earlier in the morning when we were talking about the different crises on the continent, the different forms of governance. So it really defies easy generalization. A key issue that the continent has first for decades is persistent insecurity, instability, and high levels of transnational organized crime that's hindering the continent's economic development. And if you remember from the previous session, from YACA session, where from the signals and the indicators, we're moving towards a world divided at war. To that end, the African Union peace and security architecture, which was implemented in 2002, has really been involved in trying to address these peace and security challenges. And they do not exist in isolation. They exist together. Examples of network multilateralism in Africa where regional and global institutions work together to pursue peace and stability on the continent, including in peace and support operations. Based on this background, this 40-minute session will be an opportunity to do a deep dive into the state of current multilateral and collective partnerships in addressing security challenges within Africa. And to reiterate, I don't know. I keep referring back to the previous session. In this discussion, I will lean in on what our brother and member said. If our ancestors are to come back today, our ancestors who were building the AU, come back today and listen on to the discussion, they'll be like, yes, this is the vision that we wanted. So welcome Ali Josh and Desira to this session. The format is intended to be a dialogue. I'll be asking each of you two questions, and then we'll invite time for the audience to give us some questions. And each of you, we are strict time schedule. We shall have six minutes for you to respond to each question. So recent events, you saw the previous session. We're moving towards a world divided at war. Recent events happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan. It shows multilateralism has entered a state of crisis or decline. With that in mind, Ali, Josh, and Desira, do you view adjoining multilateral and collective partnership to tackle Africa's security challenges as feasible or is it merely a myth? I will start with you, Ali. Thank you, Maria, and thanks to USIP for convening us for an important set of conversations today, not just admiring the problem as we sometimes tend to do, but also contemplating the way ahead. So look, I think in terms of multilateralism today, I think that we're in a moment of tension. We are grappling with the fact that, yes, multilateralism is in a state of crisis at some level, both on the global level and on the continent, but also the fact that multilateral cooperation is indispensable for achieving peace and prosperity. I think, as we've heard, the prevailing narrative is that multilateral institutions are in a state of paralysis or even decline. I think, for example, if you take the global side of the House taking the UN Security Council for one, there is tremendous frustration about the use or abuse, depending on your perspective of the veto power, about the lack of equitable regional representation in the institution. On the continent, you have governments expelling and rejecting traditional peacekeeping operations. You have countries leaving regional blocks over disagreements about governance, sparking debate about why these regional blocks were created to begin with and what their role should be going into the future. You have questions about how you address conflict between two African Union member states. So all of these questions are feeding into that prevailing narrative. But I think what the narrative fails to capture, but what I see from where I sit, is a real effort at multilateral transformation. So what I see is a demonstrated commitment by the international community to undertake the slow and difficult work of achieving consensus on reform. I see new tools being born out of the old institutions. And of course, many ad hoc mechanisms that are emerging to address new threats. So yes, I do believe that genuine multilateral partnerships can be used to address Africa's security challenges, or I probably wouldn't be working at the US mission to the end-endations. But there are a few big questions that are on my mind and that I think it would behoove this community to be thinking about and talking about. For one, I think this period of multilateral transformation requires experimentation. Otherwise, we're just going to be sitting on our hands, sort of lamenting the fact that our old tools and our old ways of doing business are failing to meet the moment. I think that experimentation needs to be embraced, because there will be trial and error, there will be failures, and that's something that needs to be internalized not just by our governments and our diplomats and our foreign policy thinkers, but also by our domestic constituencies. So in the United States and the US Congress, I would say multilateralism is increasingly politically polarized, and it absolutely affects the way that we move within multilateral institutions, and it affects the level of risk that we are willing to take on. So I think it is really important that, whether it's on the streets of Goma or Obamaco or Main Street America, that we are all doing the hard work of bringing people along with us. And I think this particular community has a really important role to play in that strategic communications work. I also think that we just need to be more nimble. We need to be more effective at supporting African-led solutions big picture, but also localized and homegrown solutions to security challenges. From the US policymaking space from where I sit, I think one missing piece of the puzzle for me is what African people want. What do the citizens of Darfur or people across the Sahel, what do they want from these new security arrangements? And I think ensuring that that dialogue is taking place and that African public opinion is being channeled into shaping more credible, more legitimate, more responsive multilateral security partnerships. I think that that's really important. And then I would also just say we need greater leadership from the region. I think none of this is possible without that. I think the best way to break through the gridlock between great powers in places like the UN Security Council is when there are clear signals and clear messages from the region. My boss, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, likes to say, I don't want African solutions to African problems. I want African leadership for African solutions. And I think that that's something that can't be overstated. Thank you, Ali. I love that I want African leadership for African solutions. We like to say African solutions, African problems. I like African leadership. And that's something also which is a common theme of accountability. And I also really love how you elevate the importance of the narrative that doesn't capture the role that multilateralism is transforming, the reform, and the new tools. But then I also love how you also clearly state that multilateralism is really polarized within here in the US. So, Josh, I turn to you. Is it feasible or it's merely a myth? Well, thank you so much to you for hosting this panel and to USIP for hosting this conference. I am skeptical of pan-African multilateral security partnerships, the prospects for that. I think there's potential for regional and probably time bound types of multilateral engagements that could be effective, but sort of an enduring partnership given just the situation that obtains on the continent right now makes me skeptical and I'll tell you why. So the most successful multilateral security partnership in history is NATO, of course. And NATO works, in my opinion, because you have a dominant military power, in fact, a hegemonic military power that forms the very core of it. And all the other countries involved plug into that architecture that exists under this hegemonic military security umbrella. And there's just no African corollary there that I see where you have a really powerful, dominant, competent military that is highly funded. That's another element of this. The US spends a lot of money on its defense budget and that obviously props up NATO. And then the other element of it NATO is, I think, 32 countries right now. It started smaller. It's 32 now. Obviously, in Africa, you've got 54 countries. And every extra country that you're trying to involve in a multilateral partnership brings its own set of complications. Fundamentally, though, I think the problem is the lack of political will on the continent to actually make a partnership like this work. And we can all look, the African Union was a major topic of conversation earlier. And my friend here will defend the AU a little bit later, I think, but let me just note that as of 2021, which is the last numbers on this, I saw three quarters of the AU's budget was still funded from outside the continent. Fewer than 40% of member states are actually up to date on their dues. Now, again, that's 2021. So maybe in the intervening three years, there's been some shift in those numbers. I doubt it, but maybe. That to me suggests that member states are not particularly committed to this partnership. And now the AU is different from a multilateral security partnership, obviously. But I fear that you would have the same sort of lack of political will to undergird a true multilateral security partnership. Now, the other element of this, and I already referenced it, multilateralism is really, really hard. I already talked about NATO being the most successful of these types of security partnerships. Think of all the frictions just within NATO. And these are similarly-minded countries with similar histories. Largely, there's still plenty of diversity within it. And they're at peace with one another. Now, in the Afghan context, you have an extraordinary range of capabilities, of national interests, of rivalries. Think right now that you have neighboring countries essentially at war with each other if you think about DRC and Rwanda, for instance. They're in the very same region. And then other examples, Ethiopia and Egypt are at loggerheads. Ethiopia is Somalia. So getting all of those into a cohesive multilateral security partnership strikes me as extraordinarily difficult. Now, I don't want to be entirely negative about it and say it's impossible, but I just think given the situation we have right now, I think it's unavoidable to say that this is unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Now, again, I think if we talk about something that's less than truly Pan-African, if we talk about regional, there's more opportunities there for a real multilateral security partnership, because some of these problems I've been referencing are less pronounced in the regional context, but they do still exist. Again, I just referenced some regional problems. DRC, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia. So for those reasons, as you can tell, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm happy to talk a little bit later maybe about, I think, some successful stories that we've seen on the continent as far as regional and potential elements within that. But a truly Pan-African approach, I think right now, is really deeply unrealistic. No, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate how you have done the comparison with the NATO, and also if we have something similar within the African continent, and also love how you highlight the lack of political will within the African leadership to really give the AU that kind of power to be able to make these kinds of decisions. And yes, it's very difficult. And is it realistic? Is it unrealistic? So we come to you, Desiree. Let me even build in that question. Is it realistic? Is it a reality? Is it a myth? Is it feasible? What do I do? I hear, yes. Then I know. Shall I put myself in between both? Thank you very much, Maria. Thank you to the other organizers for putting this very timely discussion together. We know how security-related issues are very interconnected today. In just during the coffee break, we're discussing and realize that if you stand in Sahel, you can shoot something from the Sahel to reach Europe. So it's not just Africa. It's very interconnected now. It's linked, so everybody's involved, basically. So I also want to recognize how challenging is it to ensure multilateralism, genuine multilateralism in terms of security. Of course, we have so many reasons. We have two situations here. Let's talk about multilateralism within the continent for them to agree that they work together to deal with the issue of peace and security. But then we need to look at the relationship between the continent and the outside world. Africa is very diverse. When you just look at it concretely, for so many reasons, of course, we still have the colonial history still waiting heavily in African countries. You can feel it when you go through discussion at the African Union. You can hear Francophone decide, Anglophone decide, and that is still impacting decisions. I still remember the peace and security council meeting where they have to decide whether the change of power in Chad was a coup or not. Yeah, that's heavily colonial influence play. In fact, the first kind of official who recognized or maybe took acts in French, we say, on a pre-act of what happened in Chad was France. Before even the PSC made a decision, and we know what the decision was. So for so many reasons, I know it's challenging to say that we will be able to make a genuine multilateralism talking about security. But my question is, do we really have the choice not to do it? Do we have a choice? I don't think we do. When country wants to do something, they will make it. I just thought about how much the EU was able, through the African CDC, put together a strategy during COVID-19. That was like a sustained story, where a country accept to share information, work together, basically to get over the situation. So there's a possibility. When there's urgency, I think countries have to. And this is where we are now. Look at the Sahel, look at the Horn of Africa. The coastal countries are not away for it. Already what happened in Sahel is touching them to go Benin, Côte d'Ivoire. So basically, I think that debate has to happen to see how do we make it happen, send a question of, is it possible? And again, as I say, it's two situations. It has to be also within the framework of international cooperation beyond Africa. So yes, we must do it. We can do it if really we want. Maybe from this question, we can also have the opportunity to look at what have been happening so far within the existing framework of Africa to do security. And this is where I won't be able to defend the EU at this time. Of course, we have beautiful sounding frameworks, institutions, calling the peace and security council, calling the panel of the wild. We have framework called aiming to silencing the gun and so forth. It's not happening. Just look at the situation. It's not happening. Peace is not happening. So basically, something needs to be done. Maybe during the debate, we can might propose that on what need to change starting from the existing institutions or also if we need to add something to it. But I would say we don't have the choice. We would need to make it happen. Otherwise, we're all going to sing together. Thank you. Thank you. I love also how you mentioned how the union came together on addressing COVID-19. I think also when you look at the report, Africa and the world that Institute for Security Studies has done, I think Yaki mentioned of we need to go through the world at war to get us to the sustainable world. So COVID-19 event was something that made AU respond collectively and share information. And maybe there was that kind of political will. So we're starting to see, and truthfully, I'm scared. I'm scared. And I just, if we have to go through certain events to get us to where we can collectively cooperate and work together. This next question is for you, Josh. Reflecting on past and present multilateral relations, which models would best ensure an effective collective partnership for Africa's peace and security challenges? Yeah. I think there's a number of elements. But I'll offer maybe two that are underappreciated, perhaps. One, and this builds off of one of my points about NATO. I think with a multilateral military intervention of some type, you really need a lead country that is competent and is willing to take on the responsibility for success. Or if you're fortunate enough to have multiple competent militaries that are involved in this, then very clearly defined areas of responsibility. And again, that's partly informed by my thoughts about NATO. But also, I think there's some examples on the continent. So we can consider the multinational joint task force in the Lake Chad Basin. If we can cast our minds back to when Boko Haram was rampaging its way through Northeast Nigeria, it was routinely routing the Nigerian military. It was dominating swaths of the country. It was a really dire situation. Chad was really the military force that turned the tide there. For all of its insufficiencies, and it certainly wasn't perfect, and Boko Haram still exists, and et cetera. But the trajectory changed for sure. And that was because Chad saw it as a very obvious threat. And they really invested men and material and everything else. And they had the competence to actually make good on it. And so they pushed Boko Haram back. I think another interesting example is ongoing right now, and that's Northern Mozambique. Small ISIS affiliate up there that sort of exploded out of nowhere in many ways and was so vicious and so successful early on that it shut down what was at the time one of the world's largest gas development projects. And the Mozambicans were unable to get a handle on this. There's reports that even Wagner mercenaries went up there and lost a bunch of guys and withdrew. And then it changed when the Rwandans came in. And competent military committed to the cause at hands. Even though there's also a SATIC mission there, but from all the reports I've seen, the SATIC mission has not been as effective as Weird Hope. It's really the Rwandans that have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting. So they've, again, turned the tide. ISIS still exists up there. It hasn't been vanquished by any stretched imagination. But again, there's a clear change. The other example is maybe Amazon Atmos. This is a situation where you had multiple sort of committed competent military, so let's say Ethiopia, the Ugandans, the Kenyans. And for all of the, again, insufficiencies of that mission, they did really push Al Shaba back. Remember, Al Shaba controlled most of southern Somalia, like the southern third of Somalia. They controlled almost all of Mogadishu. And it was really when the Ugandans, after the double suicide bombing in Kampala, surge troops in and then the Ethiopian surges in, the Kenyans invaded, really pushed Shaba back now. And that was a military success, as incomplete as it was. That brings me maybe to the second element, because I think Somalia is the case study for this, is without a legitimate, competent local government partner, these gains are always going to be ephemeral, and they will get reversed. And again, I think Somalia is the classic example here, because all that progress I just referenced is very much a danger because of the total dysfunction of the Somali government. Remember, this is a government where rival politicians called their militias into the street and they face off with each other outside of parliament. Amazon commanders, Ugandans, had to go in and negotiate among these armed militias that were affiliated with various politicians. You have intense corruption. And the politicians appear to be more interested in squabbling among themselves over political power than actually pushing and continuing to push on Shabaab. There's been progress made because of a local clan uprising against Shabaab that the government sort of hopped onto, but it's stalled. We've been promised a second offensive for months and months and months now. And I think it's all very much in danger of getting rolled back quickly because of the political dysfunction. Without a competent local government partner, these interventions will eventually fail no matter how committed or competent the militaries themselves are. Yeah, so I'll just leave it there. I think those are two really important elements that we have to bear in mind. No, thank you, Josh, for the examples you've provided of Chad and Mozambique, but also the importance of the effective local government partners. If we don't have effective local government partners, all the solutions we're trying to push will fail. And something we at Humaneid really believe in, those who are most proximate in finding these solutions. So thank you for sharing that. So Desiree, this question is for you. What pivotal role should the AU assume in encouraging multilateral and collective efforts to mitigate Africa's security issues? In addition to this, how do we shift multilateral security partnerships from being reactive, like how you mentioned the COVID, to proactive? OK, thank you again. So I think I will need to be decorated some time later by the AU if I keep supporting them. Thank you for the questions. In fact, I would say that the AU is already in that role, being the most important and the only basically pan-African organization that brings all the 55 nations together. They are in the role, and they have been there for quite a while. And they put together a number of institutions and framework, as I mentioned before. But the question now that's, and maybe I need to add as well, that AU spend more than two-thirds of its budget on peace and security. Imagine how much will be left to do development. But as we can realize it, peace is not happening. But that means there's a problem. The most important thing now to see is that how do we maybe work around the existing framework, the existing mechanism, so that that role is played more efficiently in the African Union. But also we can see how the relationship with the Eastern world can be improved as well. The last year, the AU did evaluation of the 10-year implementation of the Agenda 2063. And you realize that there they recognize that conflict, peace and security related issue, was heavily within in the action. And it take most attention. And they realize that if they don't deal with the situation, they won't be able to go further to the implementation of the peace and security. Down. What is missing? I can mention a few of them. The first thing is we need to see a kind of consistency in the policy decision that are taken at the African Union for them to be really, really able to basically be credible vis-à-vis the different actors starting from citizens. I was mentioning the situation in child. We do have policy within the African Union that name clearly what is called unconstitutional change of power. Now, what we have seen over the last five to 10 years or so is that decisions depend on where the change happened, on who is involved, and what the colonial power think about it. That's the reality that we see. So this is not resolved, but in a discussion that will happen so that everything is harmonized, this is where they have to take it from. The other important thing that is still posing problem is the division of labor between the actors within the African Union. And I think especially about the division of labor between the African Union as a continental body and the regional economy communities on matter of peace and security. How, who should play which role? Again, where we are now, every region who has some capacity to deal with peace and security conflict issue, interpret differently the principle of sobiziarity and the principle of complementarity. They do not all agree on what it means for everybody. So it's now in a case-by-case situation. And we also see that when the peace and security can't submit, when a situation happened in a particular region, it looked like the EU can't robustand what Ecuador has decided or what Sadegh has decided. Now what will happen if we had a situation in the north of Africa where the risk is not effective? So a debate has to happen. And this is where I strongly believe that we need a continental body for a certain category of issue, such as peace and security in such situation and not only focus on the regional body basically. So what we have now is that we have institutions who actually sound very nice. And I was making a funny remark in a meeting where somebody talking about, of course, I agree that one of the most active organ of the whole African Union is a peace and security council. But the only team by which it is judged is the number of meetings. Not really on the ratio by which conflicts are reduced so far since the EU, the council has been established. So it is important to look at that. I want to mention something and this is very important. I was having a side discussion with Yaki this morning and he was telling me that we are looking more and more to economic and development issue. And I know Yaki for a long time about peace and security. And I fully agree on that. Now, since the EU start embracing since the security matters, there is what we can call the over focus on military solution and we see it is not working. The military solution to resolve peace and security issue in Africa alone is not happening. So that has to also be discussed because whether you like it or not, in Niger there was a democratic election and contestable. But there was a coup supported by the same population who voted for the president. What happened? When people cannot eat, but they know that their country have resources, they will do something. So it is important that we are now linking peace and security conflict issue with economic development. That's very important. I think that aspect has to be something that occupy our thoughts in the coming years. So basically, maybe a word on the relationship between EU organ and the outside world. And it's very encouraging to see that the UN, for example, have accepted, the UN security council have accepted basically to support financially peace operations that EU will be taking the lead on. That was like a long, long, long demand that happened. But for me, I'll go back again on the solution that it shouldn't be only military solutions. We have to look at all that mean basically to bring peace to the continent. So thank you. Thank you. I agree very strongly that a military solution is not working. We need peaceful solutions. And also it's also shocking, two thirds of the budget is on peace and security, but there is no peace on there measuring outcomes through the number of meetings. So something really needs to be done. So Ali, from the perspective of the US government, what opportunities do you see in the near term for advancing multilateral and security partnerships in Africa? Sure, thank you for that. And very much appreciate the comments of my colleagues and particularly Desiree's comments on the importance of not over focusing on the military component. But I think what we've heard on the security side of things is that there is not just one path ahead or one, I think, line of effort. There are many formulations that need to be explored at different levels on the continent and the outside world has an important role to play. So I'll speak a little bit on that given where I sit. And I think we'll just highlight one opportunity I see because it's something that the US government is really focused on and Desiree referenced it, which is the fact that the UN Security Council passed a resolution in December, resolution 2719 that authorized a framework for providing UN funding for African Union peace support operations. It authorized joint planning for those dedicated operations, significant burden sharing, requiring the African Union to continue to put some of that skin in the game, setting a ceiling of 75% of UN assessed contributions that can be used for this. It requires compliance around UN financial regulations, human rights policies, conduct and discipline, the inclusion of women in these operations. And it also requires some of this work to be grounded in a political strategy. So I think, as Desiree said, this is something that has been a long time coming and is a place where we have seen African leadership and African countries pushing for something like this. I think among the sort of Africa policy wonks that are aware of this, there's a lot of focus on the where of it all. Where is the first country? Where is the first conflict and crisis where this tool will be deployed? But I think the more important conversation is around the how, how are we going to utilize this tool to address some of the challenges that we're talking about here? How are we gonna leverage deeper partnership between the UN and the African Union to transfer knowledge and to genuinely build capacity to address these issues? Obviously that capacity building, we talk a lot about it. It absolutely requires greater political will, I think, on the continent. It also requires a lot of attention and resources from within and from without. I think we need to also be talking about sort of how we define success in this case. I also think that the US government, it would be a missed opportunity to not continuing, it would be a missed opportunity to think of this as sort of a death knell for traditional peacekeeping and Africa's role in that tool and not spend time analyzing the successes and failures of multi-dimensional peacekeeping and also to continue to do the work in both cases of bringing people along and making the case of the importance of this work, both in terms of the population that are most directly affected by these tools as well as the taxpayers around the world who are continuing to fund it. Thank you so much for sharing, Ali, on how US U.N.s work on A.U. financing to pass a UN Security Council. I think these are some of the solutions that we need to be hearing and also elevating and supporting. I will turn it to the audience because I feel I hope we have some questions. Yes. Richard has a question. Yeah. Thank you, Richard Panzio from the Stimson Center. Great panel and there's two opportunities coming up for Africa to assert its leadership, amplify African voices in global governance. Around the corner is the next passing of the baton to the President of the General Assembly will be from Cameroon starting in September and I'm so glad we've had such an animated discussion about the UN collaboration with Africa on peace and security issues. There's a summit of the future many of you know about. In the last session we talked about an African dialogue that was held in Abuja feeding into that conversation. A lot of work will happen then from September this year for the subsequent 12 months on security council reform that always gets the most attention. Peace building architecture review will happen in 2025. As many of you know, the six, seven first countries on the agenda of the PBC are all from Africa. The questions around implementing in the howl on the assessed contributions to support the African Union as we've discussed. I'd love to hear any thoughts for the new incoming PGA from Cameroon and working with the 54 member states with the AU office in New York. But secondly, another key opportunity at the exact same time, the South Africa leadership of the G20 which we already heard at this meeting that happened a month back in Abuja that the South Africans have no intention to make it their G20. They want it to be the first ever Africa G20. But then there was a lot of criticism that this whole thing from India and the other countries inviting the AU, it's tokenism, it's rhetorical for it. It has no meaning. How can we give meaning to the notion of the AU being the 21st member of the G20? Thank you. Desiree, Mr. AU, you want to answer that? I think one thing that I can say it's talking about Cameroon leadership over the AU and GA coming up is that maybe it's an opportunity to push for voices and space, the representation of Africa in the various institutions. I think we are all waiting for that well with the reform of the UN. So it's an opportunity, basically, one element to end time in the fight for the reform at various level based at UN Security Council but also other institutions including those who are busy here in Washington. So let's not miss that opportunity to make it happen. Yeah. Thank you. Then from our online audience, we have a question for you, Josh, because you mentioned NATO. How to reconcile the interests of the NATO countries and the interests of BRIC countries in Africa? Can these interests be reconciled? This is from Beata. Oh, was that BRICS country? Was that the... BRICS, yeah, BRICS, yes, yes. Yeah. Well, BRICS is a fascinating block or it's hard to even define it in some ways because it doesn't have a founding charter as far as I've seen. It's a little bit amorphous as far as its purposes and goals. I think, especially with its recent expansion, it's now BRICS Plus, of course. We've seen that various countries within this grouping have different goals for the grouping itself. So there's clearly revisionist powers within BRICS that want to change the international order. They see BRICS as a vehicle for doing that. They want it to challenge the Bretton Woods system, for instance, and other elements of the global architecture, global order architecture that we have now. But then you have other countries within that block that are not as focused or interested in that. They might share some of the similar grievances, but Brazil has a very different perspective on this from China, obviously, or Russia, or now Iran, which is one of the newest members to this group. So it's hard to know which voices will win out. My sense is that because the dominant players in BRICS, like the clear powers in BRICS are very much invested in reordering the international system, that aligning NATO and BRICS is going to be extraordinarily difficult. Because NATO, of course, is a pillar of that architecture that the likes of China and certainly Russia, and Iran, et cetera, want to dismantle. So I unfortunately think these two groupings are opposed on fundamental levels. Now, again, it's hard to say that with total certainty because BRICS is, it's vague exactly what BRICS is. We know it's a grouping of these countries, but do they really act in concert? Do they really have a clear agenda? We know individual countries have agendas for BRICS, but does BRICS itself have an agenda? Thank you. Thank you. I'm called Pascal. I'm a student at the University of Maryland. And following the discussions about the issue of security in Africa in the context of multilateralism, I followed with concern the fact that, yes, something seems to be coming out of the discussion in relation to resources, which I believe should also be a concern especially for the Africans. Because partly, there are resources of interest in Africa, but for me, the concern is more about the fact that if we look at, again, the issue of urgency, there seems to be still the lack of urgency on the part of Africans or the leadership of Africa in terms of how to protect these resources for the interest of their people. And in the context of security, for me, again, the concern is that perhaps during the process that a problem of security happens, the literal that has been made in terms of progress I think gets also destroyed, taking many of the African countries back to what I would call a square zero. Now, my question is in relation to how the African Union has positioned itself in terms of handling that question of urgency in how to manage, take control, and perhaps also see how the resources that we are talking about here can be effectively managed for the interest of the Africans, either through trade or the way whatever has been raised locally is being used because I know we have rhetoric that keeps on blaming outsiders for showing interest in these resources. But I think there's also a lot that could be done at home in terms of how to take charge of the resources. So maybe I would like to hear more about how the African Union effectively is taking that leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Ali, do you want to take that? How has AU positioned itself in regards to its agency? Can I pass it to the AU guy? OK. Yeah, I think this is a very fundamental question. It's a very good question. The issue of, of course, we know that if you're going back to the root cause of the conflict resources are there, either between African countries, we know, or even from outside. Today we know for sure that not many people have interest in having peace in DRC, in having a government that is able to control its territory and resources. Not everybody has interest to see that. It's clear. We're in Africa, but also outside of Africa. So the question of resources is very important. Today, studies show us that, in fact, if you are able to add value to existing resources within the continent, we may not need aid to develop if you're able to manage it properly. So those questions are there. So coming back to what you're asking, what African Union is doing. I see the issue has been at the table for a while. There is a framework that was adopted several years ago called African mining vision, by which member states really want to put down some principle on how they manage a mineral resource within the continent. Today, talking about climate change, for example, we know a big part of the solution for the world is in Africa. European Union, for example, already plan to move from fuel in the car to only electric car at a certain period. I don't remember if it's 20, 30 or so. We know that up to 70% of co-back, one of the elements that is needed for electric battery are found in DRC alone. We know that everybody who holds a cell phone today has a little part of DRC on his hand. That's why it's difficult to believe that people have interest in having a well-organized state manage, but we have to make it happen. So maybe going beyond African mining vision, I think discussion has to be there's urgency for that to happen at the EU. Maybe to have common position on what should happen from now to those resources going from different place and outside of the continent on the raw state, not transformer. I think that is very important. It's happening again. I remember I was in the last African Minister of Finance meeting that happened in Zimbabwe. Somebody proposed even a moratorium of exploitation without adding value, like a new member state to agree on the moratorium, like a common position that we need to negotiate that at least a certain part of those resources be transformed. That will make a huge difference. So yeah, let's say it loudly so that it end up in the agenda. Thank you. Yes, indeed. We have to say it loudly so that it appears in the agenda. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Thank you so much, Maria. My name is Karim. I'm an activist from Uganda. I want to talk about two things. One, the success of Somalia, of a regional force, which is Amisoman Artemis. One, I think there was goodwill. And people went there to work. It was like, OK, let's go in there and do some work. The reason why it's very different from what is happening in Congo is conflict of interest, sending a team of East African community regional force to the RSE in that conflict area. There is a conflict of interest. For one, Uganda going there is like sending the Astonist to put out fire. So Uganda is one, paying reparations in the amount of US$325 million for destabilizing Congo. And two, you are sending it to be part of the East African regional force. Secondly, the DRSE would not trust Rwanda to be part of that force. So do we need another force from Sadak or a force to make sure they turn it down because the neighbors are not in position? So what would the EU do? Is it possible to figure out different forces from different places to address issues? For example, if the issue is in Sahel, you bring the East African regional force. And if the issue is in East Africa, then you're going to bring a force from somewhere else to avoid conflict of interest. And also, the issue of having the Astonist putting down the fire themselves. Thank you. Thank you. I think Ali, since you talked about the financing of peace support operations, would you want to respond to that? Sure. No, thank you for the question. I think what you're highlighting is, of course, that there's no one-size-fits-all approach here. And I think, when you take DRC, we've seen the sort of different machinations of various security forces going in. We've got Sadak there now. There are a lot of discussions currently in the UN Security Council about, and different powers wanting to provide various types of support to that mission. There is, because of some of the rivalries, of course, that Josh highlighted, there's opposition to that. So I think this feeds into some of the paralysis that we talked about in terms of the way forward, at least in terms of the big UN and the UN Security Council and the different influences on it. But I think that's why we need to transcend that particular institution. And we'll need to see, and it's already happening, of course, countries in Africa just sort of coming up with various, whether it's established regional blocks or other ad hoc task forces to address some of these issues. Thank you. Another question from? Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Maria. My name is Kamala Somoga. I come from Iqad. Thank you, the panelists. I have just two issues to comment on. The first relates to what Josh seemed to have been advocating towards a need for a dominant power for some of these multilateral arrangements to work. And I keep thinking what this question looked like, because some of the issues that I think the multilateralism is suffering from is the need for, by a multipolarity in the multilateral setting. So if we are advocating for what would appear like that some of the multilateral arrangement to work, then we need a stronger one power center. I don't know how the two would be able to sit together, because we know some of the challenges that the multilateralism is suffering from now is the feeling that the dominance of some of the decisions are being made are one-sided. So I don't know what reflection would give to that. The second, I think, I agree with Desiree that I think we are also moving too much towards military solutions. If you wish, intervention. And as has always been said, that a multilateral mechanism can only be as strong as its members want it to be. And I think most of African multilateral mechanisms be it AU or the REX. I think we just need to make a judicious decision to move from this obsession with intervention towards more of the prevention. And I think there's a lot of studies that have indicated that actually we are spending way much. And so when we are talking about a lot of resources of AU being spent on peace and security, we need to ask ourselves what component of peace and security, what amount of these resources are actually being used towards prevention. And I think to the extent that we start moving that direction, we will be able to start really reducing the need for some of this obsession with the intervention. Yeah, probably I will end it there because I was going to say something else but I think it skipped. But I think the whole idea is that we need really to make that decision that we need to move. Yeah, I wanted to say we know that we cannot avoid at the moment intervention because already there are a lot of fire in the continent. So as much as we are putting out efforts to reduce or to put out the fire, a lot of attention and strategic shift should be made towards investing more on initiatives that would enhance our resilience, our stability, as a way of preventing us moving towards a need for intervention. Thank you. Thank you. Good questions and comments from our colleague from IGAD. I think it is for you, Josh and Desiree to talk about the political will, the power and it's a common theme where we were raising in the earlier session of the lack of power that the AU has and that's why it's failing in some of the initiatives and then also to you Desiree, to talk about how to be more proactive and addressing the root causes of violence and conflict in this region. So I'll leave it to both of you to provide some comment. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was a good point, the pro-attiveness of our actions. Again, if you look at the peace and security architecture, there was an early warning system that is there. But frankly, within us, we have seen every conflict, we have seen the sign. Every one of them, we saw the sign. We saw the sign from South Sudan, then the warning happened, the early action never followed. We saw it in everything. So I think where the discussion had to happen now is how the early warning catalyzed early action. I think let's do that because the warnings are very visible, actually. So I agree with you that we need to be more because it's going to be, of course, cheaper. All the money we use, the money that's the integration Somalia costs to the continent and the rest of the world. That would be like a lot of money to invest in development. So I agree that if there's any discussion on peace and security related issue, how do we react to the warning that we have? Who supposed to do what and maybe be accountable to ourself? Yeah, I agree. Yeah, thanks for the question. It's a really insightful question because there is an obvious tension between what I perceive to be an efficacious model for these types of interventions and a sort of true spirit of multilateralism. And the question is going to expose a little bit of my cynicism about multilateral idealism. I remember in grad school, one of my professors would always say, the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must. And I think in practical terms, we can aspire to true multilateralism but powerful countries are not going to willingly surrender their power to less powerful countries. I think that's a indisputable fact of human nature and of international relations. And I see no reason to believe that human development is on such a trajectory that that reality will change. So given that reality, I think this model of a lead country that is genuinely competent and can be effective in a conflict situation is the one we're left with. Because if we're genuinely interested in stopping some of these awful violent conflicts that we're witnessing in Africa and elsewhere, but since we're focused on Africa here, then you have to have a committed competent military. I hate to be obvious about it, but that is I think the solution on the military side of it. And we've seen interventions that did not feature competent militaries. And I can think of the UN mission in South Sudan, for instance, there were slaughters that happened at protection of civilian sites under the noses of UNMIS peacekeepers, either because they are incompetent or they weren't sufficiently invested in act and willing to risk their own lives, which is a big ask for anybody, including soldiers, right? So this is sort of an interesting debate around, do you take troops from outside the region who are more disinterested but less committed or do you use troops within the region who may have their own political agendas and et cetera, but actually have some skin in the game, so to speak, and are more invested in seeing a conflict ended? So I think there is a multilateral model that can work with a lead dominant country where there's sort of a distribution of roles where different countries can take up a role that they're best suited for. But again, I think just the reality of the world is that these dominant powers are going to do everything they can to remain dominant. Can I challenge that a little bit? Yes, please. I'm just afraid that, maybe that model may work for Europe or maybe you might only have that model as what is left, but if you look at the continent, I would rather be in favor of maybe call it lead coalition where it's not like a country, but we deliberately push a number of them. Again, I can mention Algeria, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa in a kind of agreement to have a lead coalition instead of having a lead country for such a situation. Let's take a situation where that lead country, if we go to that model, has a problem itself or that lead country may just think that it can just go and do whatever I want everywhere as you have seen it. So I just want to say, okay, maybe we can learn from this situation and maybe come up with something nice. I don't know if that was maybe in the discussion of the creation of the standby force, for example, maybe something close to that, but I'll be more in favor of a lead coalition rather than the lead country. Don't hate me. No, no, I think also Yaki wanted to react to that. Then I'll go to you. Thanks a lot, very interesting discussion there to maybe take the debate a little bit, the step or two away. The challenge is the process of African state formation. What we have inherited in Africa, also with our militaries is the comparative security framework that comes from the way in which the state in the Westphalian state was developed, whether that is in Europe or elsewhere. We can have a long discussion about that, but the reality is that the nature of the security agencies that Africa requires is very different from what has been established in Europe and North America. We don't need traditional militaries because the state has not been created in competition with another state. The state is an imposed state. It's the product of colonialism and so on and so forth. So the kind of mind shift that needs to happen in Africa is quite different to the kind of competitive framework that traditionally was used in the establishment of the Western state, the Westphalian state. In practical terms, we need gendarmeries. We need armed forces that are orientated or security agencies that are orientated towards internal challenges, border security, and so on and so forth. That is at the heart of the African security challenge that we have adopted a competitive security framework, including all the bells and whistles that goes with that competitive security framework, which is entirely unsuited to Africa's real security challenges, which are all developmental in nature. No, thank you. Thank you so much for elevating that. We've adopted frameworks which don't work for the African context. So we need to have our own which relate the African context. Yes, our last question. Okay, thank you. My name is Emmanuel, a doctoral candidate in the International Education Policy Program at the University of Maryland. I think you have touched on very compelling issues but all the panelists. But one thing that I really wanted us to be addressed is the issue of weapons or arms access and supply to extremist groups and how multilateral organizations can play a role in actually mitigating or limiting that, especially in the context of the Horn of Africa or even elsewhere. If we saw recently one of the reasons why Kenyans, I'm originally from Kenya, were really worried about sending the Kenyan police to Haiti for innocence research showed that the gangs had more sophisticated weapons than the police that we were going to send there. And therefore the question comes, how do these dense sophisticated weapons end up in the hands of these extremist groups and what can we do as, what can multilateral organizations do about it? Thank you. No, thank you so much for that question. I think I will bring it to you, Desiree, because I think was it two years ago we had the theme of the EU silencing the guns. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that to respond? I don't think I'm the best person to touch that, but I really want to agree with you that this is one of the area where we need multilateralism. But to be frank, if the international community want to know who deliver which arm to which group, they can know it. Like, if they're able to know where Gaddafi was within his apartment at the point of time, they know, they know, basically. So I agree with you fully that the international, this is an area where we need to collaborate together to stop the having arm available to all those groups. So I don't have a solution, but I think it's a good area to push it for. I've been warned we have three minutes, but I'll take one last question from Kehinde. And the back, please. 1.5 minute, 1.5 minute, then we close. Okay. I'll be quick. Thank you for this great presentation. I'm a question for you, Ali. We've talked about legitimacy and sort of how the multilateral institutions can be reformed. And the UN financing for the EU is one example. I'm curious, as a US government as an ally, how do you think about balancing the legitimacy of new voices with actually having legitimate voices? So the EU can have a seat at the table, but who is it representing? And how do you all think about that as you're pushing for these reforms? Thanks for that, Kehinde. I mean, I think we're already seeing a challenge. I mean, when we're talking about the UN Security Council reform discussion, Africa is a key piece of that, a huge piece of unlocking the progress on that. And I think we all recognize that Africa has a critical voice, but the process at the moment is not moving forward because I think the Africans are struggling to come up with, I mean, I think there's a common African position, but there's disagreements within the continent about where the give and take is. The Africans have come up with a very firm position that may not be incredibly realistic. And I think we're sort of pushing on the fact that this needs to be a give and take. And in the last sort of round of negotiations on the Security Council reform issue, the African region was the only one not to speak because there wasn't a position on where that give and take could come from. So I think we're seeing the same in terms of the AU financing discussion. We wanna hear from the AU about where they wanna see this new tool deployed and how. And I think we're waiting for some of that to come forward. So I think there is a challenge in terms of internal processes within the continent about consensus positions on these things. But I think the fact that there's a recognition by the international community that African voices are key is an important first step. So I think it's a challenge and I think it goes back to someone raised the South African leadership of the presidency of the G20. I think another big piece is just a recognition by the US government that we need to be engaging the continent on issues outside the borders of the continent. So that's something that we're gonna keep driving on but work in progress, I think. Thank you. I think we only have our time up but can we scream, no, no? Okay, yeah. At the back. Well, I've tried to write my question so that is easy. My name is Patience Nyange. I work for EGIT as well. And my background is in communications. So I'm curious about all the strides that we are making today and how much are we documenting? How deliberate are we with relation to everything that we do today? The different strides that are being made by different organizations. 20 years from today, it's all going to be history but again, we can still use it even as we think about 20, 63 and beyond. So there is a need for deliberate conversation around documentation, how we save all these strides. So I'm just curious from the various speakers what are the efforts being done? How important this is to everybody? I think it is. That's for you. Yes. I think the importance of narrative and I think Ali had mentioned it earlier of elevating some of the good things that the multilaterals are doing. It's important and now we continue to do that. Thank you so much for that reflection and something we always tend to forget but it's important to elevate. So I'd like to thank you all for attending this session. We've had an opportunity to do an assessment of the current state of partnerships in Africa. We've also looked at the traditional alliances. We've also looked at the different ways in the future of how we are doing collective partnership but we've also questioned some of the frameworks we as the African continent have adopted. Does it work for us? Does it suit for us? We've also talked about the over militarization and I think it's a good segue to the next session where my colleagues will be talking about political transition and the importance of addressing the root causes and also the importance of not being reactive but more proactive and I'd like to thank you all and invite you to join us for lunch. We'll have a good discussion and look at the climate and energy report by our friends at the Institute for Security Studies. Thank you.