economic ambitions, which included weakening the francophone powers and establishing a common market with Nigeria as the linchpin.
Although ECOWAS was not conceived as a security organization, it increasingly assumed that role, especially after the Cold War, when external interest in Africa diminished. A 1981 protocol provided for mutual assistance against external aggression and for the establishment of an ECOWAS military force to protect member states from such aggression. The ECOWAS force was permitted to intervene in an internal conflict in a member state at the request of that state’s government if the conflict was promoted by external forces and if it jeopardized subregional peace and stability. The 1999 “Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security” elaborated on the force’s function. It could assist in conflict prevention, humanitarian intervention to thwart subregional instability, sanctions enforcement, peacekeeping, disarmament, demobilization, and peace building, and in the policing of gun running, drug smuggling, and other transterritorial crimes. The protocol was to be applied in cases of threatened or actual external aggression or conflict in a member state, conflict between two or more member states, internal conflict that could provoke humanitarian disaster or threaten subregional peace and security, serious and massive violations of human rights and the rule of law, the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected government, and other situations as determined by the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council.
Although ECOWAS members agreed to cooperate on subregional security issues, francophone and anglophone states often maintained uneasy relationships. Even when the organization was charged with the purportedly neutral task of peacekeeping, its constituent members sometimes supported opposing sides of a conflict—as was the case in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Moreover, larger, wealthier states often wielded undue influence over the organization’s actions. As the largest financial contributor to ECOWAS, for instance, Nigeria ensured that its own interests were protected and promoted. Because the AU funds many ECOWAS operations, powerful AU members states have had disproportionate influence over West African affairs.
Economic Community of Central African States
ECCAS was established in October 1983 by member states of the Central African Customs and Economic Union and of the Economic Community of the Great Lakes States. In 2017, ECCAS included eleven member states.12 The organization’s goal was to establish a wider economic community and to promote peaceful resolution of political disputes. Notably, in July 2015, the UN Security Council asked ECCAS to work with ECOWAS and the AU to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon—the latter an ECCAS member state. Like other multinational bodies, ECCAS was sometimes weakened by internal disagreements. Conflicts in the DRC, the geographic linchpin of the subregion, split the organization, with Angola and Chad supporting the DRC government and Burundi opposing it.
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region
ICGLR was established in 2000 by eleven African states to promote subregional cooperation for international peace and security, political stability, and sustainable development in the Great Lakes subregion.13 The organization aspired to address the structural causes of enduring conflicts and underdevelopment. Like other subregional bodies, ICGLR was sometimes compromised by internal rivalries. Conflicts in the DRC pitted ICGLR member states Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda against the DRC government, which was supported by Angola as well as by several non-ICGLR states. ICGLR mediation efforts were occasionally led by interested parties. Some questioned the organization’s ability to engage impartially in the South Sudan conflict, noting Uganda’s military support for the government, which along with rebel forces had been accused of massive human rights violations.
Intergovernmental Authority on Development
The Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development was established in 1986 by six East African countries to cooperate on problems resulting from the severe drought, environmental degradation, and economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1996 the organization was superseded by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which expanded the areas of subregional cooperation to include the promotion of subregional peace and stability and the creation of mechanisms to prevent, manage, and resolve intra- and interstate conflicts through dialogue.14 As was the case for other subregional organizations, IGAD was weakened by internal rivalries, and member states sometimes pursued parochial interests rather than promoting broader regional benefits. Ethiopia and Kenya struggled to assert subregional dominance, while Sudan and Uganda also jockeyed for influence. Operating within these constraints, IGAD helped broker an accord that established a transitional federal government in Somalia; it also provided a military force to protect that government and train its security forces. However, the foreign-backed regime, beholden to powerful warlords and their external patrons, had scant support inside Somalia. IGAD also played a key role in mediating an end to Sudan’s civil war in 2005 and in attempting to resolve subsequent conflicts in South Sudan in 2014–17. However, the competing interests of IGAD member states and the continued support of some states for rival factions seriously undermined the resulting agreements.
Southern African Development Community
The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was established in 1980 by nine Southern African states to build new networks of trade, transportation, communications, and energy and to promote agricultural and industrial alternatives that would break apartheid South Africa’s economic stranglehold on the subregion. In 1992, SADCC was reformulated as the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, which aimed to promote subregional integration, economic growth, development, peace, and security in the aftermath of white minority rule. SADC eventually broadened its membership to include fifteen African countries.15
Although SADCC had played a pivotal role in the struggles for majority rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa in the 1980s, its successor organization was less significant in the 1990s and 2000s. Member states sometimes promoted opposing strategies. In the DRC, for instance, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe supported the Congolese government militarily, while South Africa attempted to mediate a negotiated solution to the conflict. In 2013, SADC as an entity became more directly involved in the DRC when it joined ICGLR in promoting a regional peace and security framework and contributed soldiers to the UN intervention brigade that was intended to enforce the agreement. South Africa also played an independent role outside SADC and the subregion, helping to broker peace agreements in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.
Although the political, economic, and military destabilization associated with apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa continued to dominate the subregion and played a growing role on the continent and in the global arena. South African mining, construction, retail, and media and telecommunications companies invested heavily in the Southern African subregion and across the continent. Pretoria’s economic clout was accompanied by growing political influence. After apartheid’s demise, South Africa became the unofficial African voice in key international organizations. It played a prominent role in organizations that promote alternative visions in the Global South, including the AU, in which it was a prime mover, the Non-Aligned Movement, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and BRICS, an association that champions the interests of the major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
An advocate for populations in the southern hemisphere, South Africa also supported initiatives that strengthened the position of the Global North. It encouraged participation in the AU-led New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which embraces the neoliberal economic policies of international financial institutions and the Northern industrialized countries—particularly those of the powerful Group of Seven (G7), an organization that aims to build consensus on economics, energy, security, and terrorism.16 In 2017, South Africa was the only African member of the Northern-dominated Group of 20 (G20), which included nineteen of the world’s largest industrialized
