Pan-African Security and Pax Africana: Navigating Global Hierarchies

This article shows that Pax Africana serves as an ideological springboard of the African Union’s African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and its Common African Defence Security Pact (CADSP). It discusses the means through which Pax Africana guides the Union’s security decisions and APSA’s ability to foster peace throughout the continent. Using the three case studies of Somalia, Sudan, and Libya, the article illuminates how in its attempts to resolve some of the continent’s most dire conflicts, the African Union (AU) competes for the authority to represent Africa in conflict resolution and security arenas largely on the basis of the APSA. Finally, the article considers whether Africa can and should police itself through the deployment of the AU’s Pax Africana and assesses the extent to which it is useful as an ideological framework for Africans to navigate the competing hierarchies of global power relations, as well as its peace and security institutions in pursuit of Africa-owned solutions.