Experimenting African-centered Solutions: The Case of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)

Abstract

As one of the various milestone attempts that depict the transformation of the African myopia of wholly blaming the West for internal peace and security challenges in the continent and waiting them for Solutions, the African Union (AU) deployed its first Mission to Somalia under the code name African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). It is debatable whether this Mission qualifies to the spirit of the notion of African-centered Solutions (AfSol), and meets its pillars i.e., ownership, commitment and shared values—in its design, process and practice. This article examines the applicability of these pillars to multilateral peace operations in Africa, such as AMISOM, using qualitative research methods. Legally speaking, the AU owns the Mission for it authorized the mandate establishing the force and its deployment. Secondly, all the troops of the Mission come from Africa. However, the Mission lacks public ownership in that the African traditional methods have been ignored and grassroots’ participation in the design, process and practice has been overruled. Moreover, neither the individual African states nor the AU took the commitment to finance or provide logistics to the Mission or even involve the African populace to do so. It is also reflected that the Troop Contributing Countries share meager semblance of values in the Mission and have divergent interests across multiple issues pertaining to Somalia. The article contemplates that AMISOM does not meet the three pillars. Seemingly, the three pillars painlessly explain bottom-up peace and statebuilding approaches such as the Guurti model in Somaliland, unlike top-down approaches or multilateral peace operations such as AMISOM. Therefore, the article recommends researchers to further refine and redefine the pillars in a way that simultaneously qualifies the two approaches.