ABSTRACT
Within the African security regime complex, the AU occupies a central position. While the UN is surely the largest organisation engaging in peacekeeping in Africa, it is primarily the AU that is giving credence to the often used notion ‘African solutions for African problems’. As a Pan-African organisation it is placed prominently within the regime complex by connecting to the sub-regional African RECs and being the single most important cooperation partner for the UN in Africa. In this and the following chapter we will explore the emerging security architecture in Africa with a special emphasis on peacekeeping doctrines and individual actor capacities. This serves to illustrate the state of the art in institutional development and allows us to better understand how IOs are arranging their contribution to cooperative peacekeeping. In this regard Africa is a particularly interesting empirical example as sub-regional organisations are institutionally intimately connected to the pan-African AU. This security system is unique and cannot be found anywhere else. Beyond the internal African arrangements of RECs and the AU, a key question is: how do peacekeeping doctrines and capabilities match up with the UN in order to facilitate resource exchange? More than a decade has passed since the AU was inaugurated in Durban in 2002. While some parts of its organisational structure are well developed such as the AU Peace and Security Council (AU/PSC) others are still in the process of operationalisation. Despite all the many challenges the AU is meeting today, the transition from the OAU to the AU has been a historic one. This chapter focuses on the AU its peacekeeping doctrines and capabilities and its links with RECs. However, it will start with a short resumé of its predecessor, the OAU.
