African Union-Led Peace Support Operations

This chapter takes a pan-African perspective to the evolution of the African Peace Support Operations (PSOs) by making reference to the initial inspirations of founding fathers of the African continent—Kwame Nkrumah, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Kamudzu Banda, among others. The authors, however, note that, despite this nostalgic memory of the founders of the pan-African ideals, the African continent is still stark in institutional fragility. The chapter gives an account of the attempts that have been made by AU in history to deploy peacekeeping operations since 1981, unpacks the African Union PSO doctrine as well as the conceptual and policy issues surrounding its operationalization and lessons learnt from field missions within the stated time span.