The African Union (AU) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Partnership in Peace and Security

The last two decades have seen Africa adopted a new security approach through the activities of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the African Union’s African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Being one of the major building blocks recognized by the African Union (AU), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is striving for sustaining peace and security throughout its turbulent and conflict raging operational area. The IGAD in collaboration with the AU has played a pivotal role in peace mediation and conflict resolution of Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan. However, research works that have so far been done in the AU-IGAD cooperation lack inclusiveness, specifically, in terms of what constitutes the achievements and challenges. In view of that, this article aimed at exploring the achievements and challenges of the AU-IGAD partnership in the area of peace and security. The writer argues that despite progress in conflict prevention anD promotion of peace and security through the AU-IGAD collaboration, challenges do remain. The analysis of the data obtained from the literature, confirms that the challenges that the AU-IGAD collaboration grappled with ranged from financial, legal, political to structural. Thus, for peace and security initiatives undertaken by the AU-IGAD to be effective: adopting a comprehensive legal regime, promoting the principle of self-reliance, addressing the problem of membership overlapping across different RECs, providing considerable autonomous decision making power to the AU and IGAD, establishing a common governance management structure, and promoting and encouraging the involvement and participation of civil societies are essential.