Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015, pp. 450-457
http://www.aiscience.org/journal/jssh
The “African Solutions for African Problems”:
Challenges for the African Standby Force (ASF)
Yohannes Tekalign Beza*
Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
Abstract
Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly created postcolonial African states in 1961 did not borne fruit because most of African states opposed and rejected it due to the perceived
threat it posed on their sovereignty. However, the failure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dealing with the
prolonged conflicts in the continent, the horrific Rwandan genocide incident of 1994, and the belief that without peace,
development and prosperity could not take root in Africa provided reasons for the shift from the OAU to the African Union
(AU) in 2001 and revived Nkrumah’s idea of African wide security force, which eventually brought to existence the African
Standby Force (ASF) in 2002. Since then the ASF has achieved some successes in responding timely to conflicts in Africa
despite the fact that its efforts were largely concealed by various challenges that it faced. Research works that have so far been
done in the subject lack inclusiveness in terms of what constitute these challenges. In line with such gap, the analysis of the
data obtained from the literature, confirms that the challenges that the ASF grappled with range from political, financial,
material to technical.
Keywords
African Standby Force, Organization of African Unity, African Union, Challenge, Success
Received: June 17, 2015 / Accepted: July 4, 2015 / Published online: August 9, 2015
@ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
1. Introduction
into the prospects of establishing an Africa security system
(OAU, 1963, Art. 3.3).
The idea of establishing an African military force preceded
the African Union’s (AU) predecessor, the Organization of
African Unity (OAU). As a pioneer of the idea, Kwame
Nkrumah proposed the establishment of African High
Command in 1961 which was meant to protect the newly
created post-colonial African states (Murithi, 2005; Walraven,
1999). However, his subsequent proposals calling for a
continental wide military force that could even intervene in
intra-and-inter-states conflicts could not bear fruit due to the
perceived indirect threat it posed on states’ sovereignty
(Murithi, 2005). As a result, the idea of an African security
force could not be materialized under the OAU despite the
establishment of the Defense Commission meant to
coordinate the defense policies of member states and look
The OAU’s inability to provide better life for the African
people and to deal with the protracted conflicts that have
consumed millions of African lives and resources coupled
with the reluctance of external forces to respond timely to the
crises such as in Somalia and to rebuff the horrific incident
that happened in Rwanda in 1994 provided reasons for the
shift from OAU to AU in 2001 (Bachemann, 2011; Feldman,
2008; Yoh, 2008). The shift driven by an ‘African
Renaissance’, spearheaded by few African leaders, was
marked by ‘African solutions for African problems’ with the
issues of peace and security at its core (Bachemann, 2011).
To this end, the African Peace and Security Architecture
(APSA) has been established with the African Standby Force
(ASF) as its part meant to respond to “conflict and crisis
* Corresponding author
E-mail address: yohannesteka@gmail.com
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015, pp. 450-457
situations in Africa timely and efficiently” (PSC Protocol, Art.
2.1). In this regard, this piece argues that despite significant
successes that have been achieved setting in motion the ASF,
its ability to respond timely to crises and conflicts in Africa
has been hampered by various constraints. The study thus
tries to illustrate the evolution and successes of the ASF and
identify the constraints that hampered the ASF’s ability to
timely respond to conflicts in Africa. Accordingly, it is
structured into three parts excluding the introduction and
conclusion, the evolution and development of the ASF, its
successes, and the constraints that hindered it to respond
timely to conflicts and crises in Africa will be discussed
subsequently.
2. The African Standby Force
(ASF)
The end of the Cold War has left its scourge on Africa. The
tragic conflicts that took place in the 1990s such as in Angola,
Burundi, DRC, Liberia, Rwanda (the genocide), Sierra Leone,
Somalia, Sudan and Uganda resulted in the deaths of millions
of Africans and the destruction of resources (Adedeji, 1999).
The OAU’s inability to promote and achieve development,
democracy, human rights and security to African people; to
intervene sufficiently in the series of unfolding crises in
Africa; and the reluctance of the UN to deploy peace keeping
forces in Africa (owing to politics and the expensive nature
of the operations) so as to respond timely to conflicts in
Africa with the attendant horrific Rwandan genocide of 1994
provided sufficient reasons for African leaders to revitalize
the OAU into the AU with new mandates and structures to
allow it to be an institutional devise for “African solutions for
African problems” (Kasumba and Debrah, 2010). This is the
reason why it is underlined in the Constitutive Act of the AU
that:
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Rwanda in 1994;
2. The desire to evade heavy reliance on the UN that is
hindered by political and institutional burden to timely
respond to African conflicts;
3. The belief that without peace, development and prosperity
could not take root in Africa; and
4. The awareness that Africa could potentially attract foreign
investments and aids when it creates durable peace and
stable environment by its own (Marshall, 2009).
Cognizant of these, the Peace and Security Council (PSC)
was established in 2002 as the Union’s “standing decisionmaking organ for the prevention, management, and resolution
of conflicts” that operates as “a collective security and earlywarning arrangement to facilitate timely and efficient
response to conflict and crisis situations in Africa” (PSC
Protocol, Art. 2.1).The Protocol is the base at which the
African Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is
erected. The APSA is meant to provide the necessary means
to fulfill the tasks set out in the Constitutive Act and the
Protocol establishing the PSC (PSC Protocol, Art. 2).
The APSA as an operational structure is meant to execute
decisions taken by African leaders mixing together key and
interconnected elements that are concerned with:
1. Political decision-making (PSC);
2. Mediation and advisory capacity (the Panel of the Wise);
3. The gathering and analysis of information (the Continental
Early Warning System);
4. Peace support operations (PSO) capacity (the African
Standby Force and the Military Staff Committee); and
5. A Special Fund (PSC Protocol, Art.2.2).
1. “The scourge of conflicts in Africa constitutes a major
barrier to the socio-economic development of the
continent and of the need to promote peace, security and
stability” (the Preamble);
2. “The right of the Union to intervene in a Member State in
grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and
crimes against humanity” (Art. 4 (h)); and
3. “A common defense policy for the African Continent”
(Art. 4 (d) (AU, 2000).
The call for “Africa solutions for African problems” has
accorded primacy for issues of peace and security. This is
primarily due to:
1. The need for reacting swiftly to conflicts and not to let
genocide happen elsewhere in Africa as it happened in
Figure 1. The African Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).
Source: Vines and Middleton (2008)
In the APSA, the PSC is “the sole authority for mandating
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Yohannes Tekalign Beza: The “African Solutions for African Problems”: Challenges for the African Standby Force (ASF)
and terminating AU peace missions and operations” whose
political command and control is vested in the Chairperson of
the Commission “who should then submit periodic reports to
the PSC on the progress of implementation of the relevant
mandates of such operations and missions” (AU, 2003: 25).
As a rapid force meant to be deployed in cases where there is
perceived or actual conflicts or to intervene in respect of
grave circumstances as envisaged in the Constitutive Act of
the AU (Art. 4, h and j), the ASF offers the AU with a means
of timely responding to conflicts and for the first time a
common position and action plan for the development of its
PSO capacity (De Coning, 2007).
The ASF is not a monolithic African army but a set of subregional standby arrangements that are established through
member states’ pledges and along with the Regional
Economic Communities (RECs) and Regional Mechanisms
(RMs) including the Central, Eastern, Northern, Southern and
Western African sub-regional standby forces (Kasumba and
Debrah, 2010). The ASF is “composed of standby
multidisciplinary contingents, with civilian and military
components in their countries of origin and ready for rapid
deployment at appropriate notice.” It is intended to enable the
AU to respond to a wide range of contingencies from
observation and monitoring missions, to preventive
deployments, humanitarian assistance missions, peacebuilding operations, and intervention in a member state in
grave circumstances (PSC Protocol, Art. 13 (1 and 3)).
Each state in the sub-region should establish a contingent of
the ASF and all standby forces in the sub-regions can be used
for operations across sub-regions as it is suggested that if
member states of that sub-regions lack such capacity
“encouragement be given to potential lead nations to form
coalition of the willing as a stop-gap arrangement pending
the establishment of regional standby forces arrangement”
(AU, 2003: 17). Each sub-region is also expected to establish
as an entry point standby force at brigade level with 5000
troops per sub-region making the overall number of the ASF
troops about 20,000 (Girmachew, 2008). In quick response to
war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity it is
suggested that potential lead nations should be identified
“with standing deployable Headquarters capacity of greater
than brigade level, and with forces that are capable of seizing
points of entry, ideally using airborne or airmobile assets”
(AU, 2003: 17).
The ASF establishment takes two phases. The first phase is
designed to be till 30 June 2005 with the AU to establish a
strategic level management capacity for the management of
Scenarios 1-2 missions (see the table below) that is to be
matched by RECs establishing regional standby forces up to
a brigade size to achieve up to Scenario 4. The second phase
ranges from 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2010and it is envisaged
that by the year 2010, the AU would have developed the
capacity to manage complex peacekeeping operations and the
RECs will continue to develop the capacity to deploy a
Mission Headquarters (HQs) for Scenario 4, involving AU/
Regional peacekeeping forces (AU, 2005: 2). Inability to
make ASF fully operational as it planned to be by 2010
justifies its third phase extended from 2011-2015 (Vines,
2013). It was suggested that the ASF doctrine, planning and
operational procedures & training standards should be based
on those of the UN (AU, 2003, 2005).
Table 1. The ASF Mission Scenarios and Timelines for Development.
Scenario
Description
Deployment Requirement(Form mandate resolution )
1.
AU/Regional military advice to a political mission
30 Days
2.
AU/Regional observer mission co-deployed with UN Mission
30 Days
3.
Stand-alone AU/Regional observer mission
AU Peacekeeping force for Chapter V1 and Preventive Deployment Mission
(and Peace Building)
AU Peacekeeping Force for complex multidimensional Peace Keeping Missions
including those involving low level spoilers
AU intervention, e.g. in genocide cases where the international community does
not act promptly.
30 Days
4.
5.
6.
30 days
90 days with the military component being able to deploy
in 30 days
14 days with robust military force
Source: AU (2003: 3-7)
3. The Successes of the African
Standby Force (ASF)
Since its establishment in 2003, the ASF has exhibited a great
deal of progress and successes in responding timely to
conflicts in Africa. African leaders’ desire and commitment
that is seen both in the establishment of the APSA with the
ASF at its center (the PSC Protocol, Art. 2) and the
elaboration of various documents intended to “provide the
technical and conceptual basis and the regulatory setup for
the operation of the ASF” (Solomon, 2010: 12) could be seen
as one of perhaps the most important achievement of the ASF.
Besides, the decentralization of the ASF to the five RECs
meant to offer regional actors responsibility of ownership of
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015, pp. 450-457
regional security matters supposedly to enhance efficiency
could amount to the success of the ASF (Dier, 2010). The
exhaustion and thus reluctance of the UN to involve in
peacekeeping missions in Africa, which resulted in
channeling resources in the form of training and finance to
the ASF from multilateral donors (such as the UN and EU)
and bilateral donors (Germany, France & Britain)
(Bachemann, 2011) is also positively contributed in
strengthening the ASF.
Moreover, the capacity built-up due to internal initiatives and
external assistance helped the AU:
1. To let all the regional brigades save the NARC to conduct
various training and joint exercise meant to enhance their
operational readiness (Solomon, 2010);
2. To develop the West, South and East African regional
standby forces capabilities to conduct peace support
operations up to and including scenario 4 (Kinzel, 2008);
and
3. To activate the ASF and mandate it incessantly the
deployment of missions react to violent conflicts in
Burundi (AMIB), Darfur (AMIS), Somalia (AMISOM),
the CAR (FOMUC), Comoros (AMISEC) and Mali
(AFISMA) (Lotze, 2013; Svensson, 2008; Vines, 2013)
though the effectiveness of such missions are largely
obscured by the challenges presented below.
African states have also increasingly become willing to
deploy their personnel to African-led missions and UN
peacekeeping operations, their number rose from one (i.e.
Burundi) in the first AMISOM in 2007 to 13 in the Mali
(AFISMA) in 2013 and their contribution from 1700
personnel (military and civilian) to 40,641 that were
mandated to serve in the AU missions beside the 30,424 joint
AU-UN mission in Darfur (UNAMID (Vines, 2013). Besides,
the AU has responded against the LRA launched in 2012 by
AU-led Regional Cooperation Initiative/ RCI-LRA (Vines,
2013). Jointly working in the planning and decision making
process has also slowly become a trend among the AU,
RECs/ RMs, EU and UN (Lotze, 2013).
4. Challenges for the African
Standby Force (ASF)
Despite the above successes, many factors have contributed
to the ineffectiveness of the ASF and its inability to timely
respond to conflicts in Africa that ranges from political and
structural, legal and conceptual, finance and resources, to
technical barriers. Constituting the central issues of the study,
these barriers are thoroughly examined below forming two
headings.
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4.1. Political and Structural Barrier
Despite the political commitment of the AU/African states to
establish ASF, its ability to respond timely to crisis in Africa
was seriously hampered by political and structural hurdles.
The first is lack of political will and commitment of African
states to mandate deployment of peace support missions
whenever the need arises because their actions depend on
their own national interests and the political dynamics
surrounding such interests in the PSC (Solomon, 2010) as it
was seen in the reluctance and lateness of missions
deployment in countries such as Burundi, CRA and South
Sudan (Lotze, 2013). African states have divergent interests
to deploy peace support operations abroad as the South
African intervention in Lesotho and DRC was motivated by
the need for regional stability and to depict it as pioneering
nation in Africa, respectively; Uganda’s troop deploying in
Somalia in support of the US War on Terror aggravated by its
advantage to it; Rwanda’s interest in Darfur tied with its own
experience of genocide; and some states will join a mission
either to generate funds for their armed forces or other ends
(Vines, 2013). Such divergent drives thus are not always
suitable to sustained commitment.
The second political hurdle is hostility and mistrust between
states such as in the IGAD region between Ethiopia and
Eritrea due to their unresolved border conflict and the
former’s non-mandated intervention in Somalia in 2006
(Moller, 2009; Zemelak, 2012) and in the Maghreb region
between Morocco (not an AU member) and Algeria over
Western Sahara (occupied by Morocco) and the alleged
support the latter provided to Polisario that fought for the
independence of Western Sahara; and the internal cracks
created in the Maghreb states on Western Sahara and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Nibishaka,2012; Vines, 2013).
Undoubtedly, these hinder intra-regional joint security
actions and incapacitate both regions’ standby forces ability
to timely respond to conflicts.
Hegemonic aspiration of states in some regions is another
hindering factor. Competition for sub-regional hegemony
such as between Ethiopia and Kenya in the IGAD region that
resulted in the HQ and Planning element of EASBRIG to be
divided and located in Addis Ababa and Nairobi respectively
and Egypt and Libya (under Gaddafi) in the Maghreb region
that was one of the reasons why the establishment of North
brigade lag behind others. Nigeria’s and South Africa’s
regional hegemony also helped to shape ECOWAS’ and
SADC’s agenda to their advantage, respectively, that
generated suspicion and fear among states in both regions
(Dier, 2010; Vines, 2013), which is inimical for timely
addressing conflicts that might arise in these regions.
The fourth barrier lies on the extent of internal conflicts
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Yohannes Tekalign Beza: The “African Solutions for African Problems”: Challenges for the African Standby Force (ASF)
within the sub-regions. The IGAD and Central Africa regions
are the two major conflict zones as it was seen in the frequent
conflicts took place in Somalia and Eastern Congo and the
recent crisis in South Sudan. What hindered from addressing
the conflicts is not only their magnitude but also neighboring
states’ intervention directly or through proxies to pursue their
goals such as Ethiopia and Kenya in Somalia, and Rwanda
and Uganda in Eastern Congo (Feldman, 2008; Vorrath,
2012).
The fifth hurdle is AU’s lack of political ownership of the
ASF at the continental level reason to that some regions such
as the West and South often opted for regional approach to
conflict management and thus the challenge lies on how to
combine the AU historical legitimacy and the RECs
operational legitimacy (IRSEM, 2011). Besides, since the
ASF is a political tool of states and then the choice between
the continental and regional levels depends on the interests
they seek to defend (IRSEM, 2011).
Beside the above political hurdles, structural barriers further
hamper the ASF capacity to respond timely to conflict in
Africa. These include, first, multiple and overlapping
membership: 46 African states are members of 2-4 RECs
(Ndomo, 2009: 10). Dual membership therefore (1) creates
conflict of interests among and erodes allegiance of member
states in the regions; and (2) splits the already scarce
financial resource and weakens the economic basis of
cooperation (Kinzel, 2008; Zemelak, 2012). These are
detrimental to mutual trust and integrative timely actions to
conflicts. Besides, the uneven development of the ASF
brigades across regions counters its ability to respond timely
to conflicts. The North and Central African brigades lagged
behind the far developed East, South and West brigades that
thwarted the ASF efforts to address such conflicts as in Libya
and CAR (Vines, 2013; Vorrath, 2012).
ASF has also been challenged by lack of integrated command
and control system, provision of the requisite military
specialties and technical and infrastructural capabilities as it
was the case in AMIS and AMISOM (IRSEM, 2011;
Solomon, 2010); and lack of clearly spelt out rules defining
the roles and powers of the AU and RECs in relation to the
use and authorization of ASF capabilities and mediating an
effective AU-RECs engagement on ASF issues despite the
fact that Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed
in between (Cilliers, 2008; Solomon, 2010). This prevents
the effectiveness of the mandate and the ASF’s ability to
manage conflict timely.
In addition, lack of synchronization of brigades across
regions and proper planning as it was seen in the AMIS and
rejection of the UNSC frequently of AU’s plans to deploy a
mission due to gaps in planning and inadequate information
and the fact that African operations often undertaken on ad
hoc and uncoordinated basis undermine the ASF early
response to conflicts in Africa (Lotze, 2013; Guicherd, 2007;
IRSEM, 2011). The multidimensionality of the ASF as it is
envisaged in the PSC, Art. 14, is also diluted by the much
focus given to its military over civilian/peace-building
components as it was seen in Burundi and in Sudan/ Darfur
(UNAMID) (Vorrath, 2012). Besides, the ASF is not a
solution for political crises affecting regions such as in the
Horn of Africa as it was clearly shown in case of AMISOM
despite its civilian component (IRSEM, 2011). Moreover,
lack of match between capacity and willingness of actors in
the RECs, clear flow of institutional communication between
AU and RECs, consistency and assertiveness of leadership,
and paucity of the practice of liberal peace in many of the
members states upon which the AU is based are the structural
barriers (Vines, 2013; Vorrath, 2012).
Conceptual and legal barriers are also supplementary
hindering factors for ASF. These include:
1. The dilemma lies on the AU’s need to assure authorization
from UNSC for its intervention under the Constitutive Act
(Art. 4(h)) to which the latter has no legal authority under
UN Charter (Dier, 2010; Getachew, 2008);
2. Although scenarios and timelines for deployment are set
out, it is unclear that how it would be possible since the
ASF is a standby but not a standing body (Solomon, 2010);
3. The deployment of 15 days’ timelines in the genocide case
is unlikely since it needs self-sufficient fully operational
forces which is challenging even to NATO let alone the
ASF beside lack of plan for the identification of the lead
nation to cover such case (Getachew, 2008; Kinzel, 2008);
4. Because scenario six was designed in the context of the
conflict dynamics of the 1990s, it could not capture the
current crises the continent grappling with such as terrorist
networks, piracy, and state repression (Lotze, 2013);
5. Gaps existed in the existing documents regarding
reimbursement to Troop-Contributing Countries (TCCs)
and whether the lessons learned are incorporated into the
planning of future mission (Solomon, 2010); and
6. It is argued that the ASF is a ‘moving target’ due to the
inability of African stakeholders to settle it on a clear
concept and the ensuing ambiguous goals thus let every
partner free to pick and choose with the natural bias of its
interests (Bachemann, 2011).
4.2. Financial, Resource and Technical
Hurdles
Lack of adequate and sustainable funding or African financial
ownership of the ASF is a serious barrier. The paradox here
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015, pp. 450-457
lies on the desire to approach conflicts in Africa with African
capacity and the reluctance of African states to pay their
annual contributions as they provided from 2008 to 2011
only 2% of the AU’s Peace Fund to cover peace and security
efforts whilst the rest came from external donors, which is
the reason why AMISOM is now totally dependent on the EU
and UN, and MICOPAX, the ECCAS mission in the CAR
received 50% of its finance from the EU and 30% from
France (Bachemann, 2011; Vines, 2013; Vorrath, 2012). The
EU has provided 700 million Euros to operationalize the
APSA and to support the African peace support missions
(Dier, 2010; Kinzel, 2008).
Given the estimated $475 million the UN spent monthly on
its missions in Africa (2009-2010) (UN, 2014), it is obvious
that the AU need to access the necessary funds for its
missions, lack of which as its limited experience in AMIS
and AMISOM suggested remains as its major challenge
(Solomon, 2010). Therefore, AU’s lack of sustainable
funding has resulted in:
1. The inability to reach mandated troop levels;
2. Limited operational effectiveness owing to a short term
focus on the availability of funding than achieving a
longer term strategic focus on the mandate;
3. A difficult transition from an under-resourced AMIS to
UNAMID in Darfur/ Sudan; and
4. Unsustainable administrative, coordination and financial
management burden placed on a limited AU capacity by
many donors reporting and oversight mechanisms (UNSC,
2009).
The challenge is not only lack of sustainable funding from
external donors but reliance on them also open up spaces for
“the injection of external foreign policy concern” (Young,
2007: 5) that obviously undermines independent decision
making ability of the AU vis-à-vis ASF deployment to
address conflicts timely.
Resource and logistic barriers are also hampering factors for
the ASF. These include:
1. The HQ and the planning elements in the five regional
brigades varying degree are not only understaffed but also
lacked specialists and experts (Kinzel, 2008; AU, 2010);
2. Lack of a good number of lead nations capable of carrying
out military missions under scenario 6 (Getachew, 2008);
3. Lack of efficient logistic systems made African operations
entirely dependent on the support such as NATO for airlift,
the US for logistical service or the UN for inclusive
support packages as in the case of AMISOM (Lotze, 2013);
4. Lack of the necessary infrastructure and equipment, air
455
and sea lift capabilities, transportation and information
systems as it was seen in UNAMID (Pham, 2009);
5. Lack of adequate training centers mainly for ECCAS
contingents in the central region (Solomon, 2010);
6. Lack of adequate fire arms as it was witnessed in the
AMIS (Feldman, 2008);
7. Limited national resources that hindered early intervention
like in Guinea Bissau and Mali (IRSEM, 2011); and
8. Inadequate troops with small number of civilian and
police elements varying across regions (AU, 2010;
Bachemann, 2011).
Moreover, the ASF is thwarted by technical and administrative
barriers. Lack of inter-operability and compatibility of
different regional brigades rooted in the national armies of the
five RECs regions is the major hurdle owing to their diversity
in: (1) linguistic milieu that often obstructed effective
communications of the AU’s missions (AU, 2010), its
intelligence capabilities as lack of Arabic speakers in AMIS
hampered the mission (Feldman, 2008), and its relations such
as with ECCAS because the latter opted for French to operate
with than the former of English (IRSEM, 2011); (2) culture
that undermines the efforts of forging a coalition of forces of
different religions, values and traditions (Feldman, 2008); and
(3) equipment, standards for operational procedures,
approaches and training backgrounds (AU, 2010; Solomon,
2010). Beside the technical hurdles, administrative constraints
count against the ASF including: (1) lack of administrative
capacity not only to mobilize the required funding but also
manage what has been obtained effectively and in transparent
ways as the experience of AMIS clearly showed (Ekengrad,
2008); (2) putting regional brigades’ HQ and Planning
components apart such as in the East brigade is not only less
efficient but also makes coordination efforts challenging in
conflict situations let alone the central African brigade that has
not yet permanent HQ (AU, 2010; Vines, 2013); and (3) lack
of donors coordination because it carries transaction costs,
each donor is motivated by its own interests, and donors’
competition mainly for political visibility in the international
scene (Bachemann, 2011). All of these hindering factors
discussed above militate against varying degree the
effectiveness and ability of the ASF responding timely to crisis
situations in Africa.
5. What Should Be Done
African states’ efforts to address conflicts in the continent and
activate the ASF to realize peace and stability has registered
many successes despite challenges that have hampered its
effectiveness and ability to respond timely to crisis situations
in Africa. The question thus is not whether Africans need a
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Yohannes Tekalign Beza: The “African Solutions for African Problems”: Challenges for the African Standby Force (ASF)
device as the ASF for “African solutions for African problems”
but how the ASF’s capacity could be enhanced by overcoming
the challenges that it encountered so as to make it effective and
ready to manage conflicts in the continent.
3. Establish a communications basis via adequate language
training necessary to standardize equipment and
communications media.
To this end, it is suggested that the AU member states should
provide the financial means to run the ASF by paying their
annual contributions based on the logic that “investment in
the maintenance of peace and security in the continent
amounts to buying security for their efforts on development
and better life for their citizens” (Getachew, 2008: 20). The
AU also not only search out alternative sources of funding as
through taxes and tariffs, special contributions and creating
special arrangements with bilateral and multilateral donors
but also ensuring that such funds are channeled and
administered
effectively
through
viable
financial
administrative system acceptable to all partners. Since almost
all the ASF’s barriers are linked directly to deficits of
predictable and sustainable funding due attention should also
be given to “African ownership” of the ASF. Moreover, the
AU should devise means to coordinate donors’ funding so as
to direct it timely to its missions.
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4. Equip the ASF with the necessary logistics and resources.
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