African Union’s 23rd Ordinary Summit- Africa is making progress towards a regional military

Equatorial Guinea hosted the African Union’s 23rd Ordinary Summit 20 – 27 June 2014
Theme: Agriculture and Food Security

Sahara Press Service

MALABO — The 23rd Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government of the African Union kicked off June 20th in Malabo, capital of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, under the theme “Agriculture and Food Security”, the main topic for the year 2014.

Special guests of the summit are UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy Brey, along with other invited guests.
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African Union says progressing to military force by end-2015

Reuters

MALABO- Africa is making progress towards a regional military force by the end of next year, a senior African Union official said on Wednesday, as local leaders urged less reliance on foreign intervention.

Delays in implementing the African Standby Force (ASF) forced African states to request French intervention to tackle crises last year in Mali and Central African Republic.

African officials have voiced scepticism that the 5,000-strong force, under discussion for more than a decade, would be ready by next year’s delayed deadline, prompting African leaders to approve a stop-gap rapid reaction force last year.

Smail Chergui, the 54-nation African Union’s Commissioner for Peace and Security, said four of the five regional brigades due to make up the Standby Force were in an advancedstate of readiness, including the North African one.

At a meeting to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Peace and Security Council, he said “progress is being made to have (the Standby Force) fully operationalised by December 2015.”

The Peace and Security Council was providing analysts to regional blocs in Africa for a continent-wide early warning system for conflicts, aiming at improving prevention, he said.

Chadian President Idriss Deby said a series of conflicts across Africa – from South Sudan to Central African Republic – were a reminder its leaders that the continent needed to do more to strength its own security institutions.

Ahead of a two-day summit of the African Union, which officially opens on Thursday in the capital of Equatorial Guinea, Deby called for more resources to be channelled into the AU’s Peace and Security Council.

“It is time for us to take our destiny into our own hands,” he said, noting the rise of armed Islamist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria presented a new kind of challenge for the continent’s security.

However, South African President Jacob Zuma urged closer cooperation between the AU’s Peace and Security Council and the U.N. Security Council, in light of the continent’s limited resources to tackle crises on its own.

“We need to do more to address the root causes of conflict on this continent,” Zuma said, urging the African Union to work more on crisis prevention and do work in post-conflict countries to prevent relapses into violence.

More than 90 percent of the AU’s peace and security efforts, including its AMISOM mission in Somalia, are funded by external actors such as the European Union and United States.
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Video: Equatorial Guinea: 23rd Au Summit Held at The Sipopo Conference Center

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Video: African Union Summit: Leaders to focus on peace & security in Africa

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Video: 25th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council in Malabo
Statement of the AUC Chairperson, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma during the opening of the 25th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea 23 June 2014

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25th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council opens in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea,23 June 2014.

Programme of the 23rd AU Summit